Weekly Review

By Paul Ford

Cookie Monster in the Green Room (White House photo).

Army Spc. Charles Graner Jr. was sentenced to ten years in military prison for his role in torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.¹ Graner threatened to rape prisoners and made them eat pork, and made one prisoner eat from a toilet.² He insisted that he was only following orders. “There's a war on,” he said. “Bad things happen.”³ More reports surfaced detailing torture in Iraq, this time with Navy SEALs and the CIA as the instigators, and⁴ the Pentagon was considering whether to fund special, El Salvador-style Iraqi death squads.⁵ Sixty Afghans were released from Guantánamo Bay and returned home, and⁶ detainees from other nations were released without being charged.⁷ Further allegations of torture at Guantánamo Bay were made by the FBI.⁸ Iraqi insurgents were killing at least one hundred people each week, and ⁹ the Bush administration announced that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction had been a total failure.¹⁰ Iraqi polling places were bombed, and¹¹ Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi announced that $2 billion would be spent to add 50,000 troops to the Iraqi army.¹² Ukraine pulled its troops out of Iraq.¹³ A soldier who sued the Army for requiring him to return to Iraq was sent back to serve another tour of duty, and¹⁴ in Mosul, a Syrian archbishop was kidnapped.¹⁵ The Army was planning to deploy knee-high robots equipped with machine guns to fight Iraqi insurgents, and¹⁶ Osama bin Laden was rumored to have returned to Afghanistan.¹⁷

The White House continued to work towards a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages, and¹⁸ the Supreme Court ruled that the Ku Klux Klan could adopt a highway in Missouri.¹⁹ A federal judge ordered Cobb County, Georgia, schools to remove from biology textbooks all stickers that question the theory of evolution.²⁰ Sir David King, the Chief Scientific Advisor to the United Kingdom, was under attack by American lobbyists for saying that global warming is a problem, and²¹ a police officer in the Philippines was accused of stealing a fellow officer's bomb-sniffing dog, then eating it.²² United States Special Forces teams were conducting secret missions in Iran, where²³ Halliburton, operating through a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, was to start drilling for oil.²⁴ In Hempstead, New York, two legal-reform activists were detained for telling old lawyer jokes outside a courthouse, including: “Why do they bury lawyers 100 feet into the ground? Because down deep, they're good people.” An offended lawyer had the men arrested.²⁵ Rwanda said that it will attempt to try one-eighth of its population for genocide. Trials will be held in small village courts, called gacacas.²⁶ E! Television and Britain's BSkyB announced plans to broadcast 30-minute dramatizations of Michael Jackson's child molestation trial, based on the testimony from the previous day, in order to get around a ban on cameras in the courtroom.²⁷ A 64-year-old webmaster sued the Tallahassee, Florida, Department of Elder Affairs for age discrimination, and²⁸ a New Mexico woman was sued for embezzling Girl Scout cookies.²⁹ The FBI announced that Virtual Case File, an incomplete, $170 million software application intended to help agents share information, was likely to be scrapped. A British contractor was hired to define requirements for a new system.³⁰ All 790 men in Truro, Massachusetts, were asked to submit to a DNA test so that they could prove their innocence in a three-year-old murder case.³¹ Satanists were upset to learn that the Regina Apostolorum, a Vatican university, was going to offer courses in Satanism and exorcism. The church, said a prominent Satanist, “has the blood of countless millions on its bejeweled fingers.”³² A man jumped from the Millau viaduct, the world's tallest bridge, to become its first suicide, and³³ the last reel-to-reel tape manufacturer in America went under, forcing indie rockers to hoard tapes.³⁴ Nas married Kelis.³⁵ In Colombia, a Black Hawk helicopter crashed while on a counter-narcotics mission, killing all twenty onboard.³⁶ A four-legged, anus-less, double-penised baby was born in Nigeria, and³⁷ Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, was revealed to have gone to a party dressed as a Nazi.³⁸

In India, men were calling tsunami relief help lines, offering to marry women who lost their husbands in the recent disaster. “I have no caste barriers, and my parents are very supportive of my decision,” said one caller.³⁹ President George W. Bush nominated Michael Chertoff, a former aide to John Ashcroft and former Senate Republican counsel for the Whitewater investigation,⁴⁰ to head the Department of Homeland Security.⁴¹ The White House was preparing for the president's inauguration, and it was revealed that Laura Bush's inaugural gown is an ice-blue and silver embroidered tulle V-neck dress with matching satin coat, by de la Renta; Jenna and Barbara Bush are being dressed by Lela Rose, de la Renta, Derek Lam, and Badgley Mischka. President Bush will wear a business suit.⁴² “Not all the new clothes are in the house,” said Mrs. Bush, “but they've all had their last fitting.”⁴³ Forty agencies were working together to provide security for the event.⁴⁴ The White House refused to reimburse Washington, D.C., for inauguration expenses, which will require $11.9 million to be diverted from homeland security funds, and⁴⁵ it was announced that no one may carry a cross along the parade route.⁴⁶ Performers in the inaugural parade, including marching bands, bell ringers, and Civil War reenactors, were instructed not to look directly at Bush as they pass the parade stand, nor to make any sudden moves.⁴⁷ A head, hands, two legs, and a torso were pulled from latrines in Botswana, and⁴⁸ Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were becoming friends.⁴⁹ The parents of a baby born on January 6, and officially named the 1.3 billionth citizen of China, turned down sponsorship deals from diaper makers. “Zhang Yichi is too young, and too many commercial activities will have negative impact on the boy's healthy growth,” said Zhang Tong, the boy's father. ⁵⁰ Women were freezing their eggs in order to have them fertilized when it's convenient, and⁵¹ storms ravaged California, where the resulting mud slides killed at least nine while dislodging boulders up to twenty-five feet in diameter.⁵² Herpes struck the horses of Michigan, and⁵³ an iceberg the size of Long Island was about to smash into an Antarctic glacier.⁵⁴ A Florida man, upset over hurricanes, beat a puppy with a hammer, and⁵⁵ a Florida minister died at the pulpit. His last words were, “And when I go to heaven. . .”⁵⁶