Weekly Review

By Theodore Ross

President George W. Bush officially replaced the phrase “stay the course” in Iraq with “We will stay in Iraq,” and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki insisted he never agreed to a U.S. timetable for reducing sectarian violence. “I'm not America's man,” he said.^{1 2 3} Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told critics of the war to “back off.”⁴ In Basra, Prince Philip of Britain assured the troops “at the sharp end” that “a great many locals do very much appreciate what you are trying to do for them,”⁵ and Senator Rick Santorum said, “As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else. It's being drawn to Iraq.”⁶ German soldiers serving in Afghanistan snapped commemorative photographs of themselves with the skull of a reputed Taliban militant.⁷ Vice President Dick Cheney denied that “waterboarding,” a banned interrogation method, was the same thing as giving a terrorist detainee a “dunk in water.” He also said his term as “Vice President for Torture” was over.⁸ A United Nations official claimed that the United States has become a role model for prisoner-abusing governments around the world.⁹ Mexican president Vicente Fox called a proposed 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border an “embarrassment,”¹⁰ and Los Angeles admitted that it has 1.3 million outstanding parking tickets.¹¹ French youths seized and burned three buses in a Paris suburb. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin promised an immediate response to the disorder: “We cannot accept the unacceptable.”¹² North Korea warned the United States not to make any “madcap nuclear moves” or to proceed with any “wild design to ignite a nuclear war,”¹³ and Russian president Vladimir Putin blamed a failure to adopt a “proper tone” in diplomatic negotiations with North Korea for the current weapons crisis.¹⁴ The government of Niger told 150,000 Arab nationals that it was “high time” they returned to their native homeland in Chad.¹⁵ An official in the Netherlands suggested Dutch troops bring “a few prostitutes” along on foreign military missions,¹⁶ and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged Iranians to have more babies. “It is said that two children is enough. I oppose this,” he said.¹⁷ President Bush admitted that he frequently consults “the Google.”¹⁸

Former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling was sentenced to 24 years in jail. “I feel terrible about what happened,” Skilling said, referring to the company's collapse, which cost investors and employees more than $62 billion in devalued stock and pension plans. “That's not to say I did something wrong.”¹⁹ Ford Motor Company announced $7.6 billion in third quarter losses,²⁰ Daimler Chrysler also lost $1.5 billion during the same time period,²¹ and thousands of American soldiers were avoiding overseas duty by going deeply into debt.²² The Reproductive Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, revealed that men who use their cell phones too much could be making themselves infertile.²³ The American Association of Trial Attorneys announced it would change its name to the American Association for Justice,²⁴ and scientists concluded that fat people lower the fuel efficiency of automobiles.²⁵ A physicist at the University of Central Florida proved that vampires are mathematically impossible,²⁶ President Bush called Nancy Pelosi a “secret admirer” of tax cuts,²⁷ and the city of Madison, Wisconsin, announced that its Halloween festivities will be a success if the police are not compelled to pepper-spray angry mobs of drunken residents.²⁸ Chinese president Hu Jintao was purging disloyal party members,²⁹ and England's Queen Elizabeth II strained her back.³⁰ Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali, mufti of Sydney, Australia's largest mosque, compared unveiled women to “uncovered meat.” “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside,” said the mufti, “and the cats come to eat it . . . whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”³¹ A pelican attacked and ate a pigeon in London's St. James's park.³²

John Spencer, a candidate for the U.S. Senate from New York, denied he had ever called Hillary Clinton ugly,³³ and Wyoming Representative Barbara Cubin threatened her congressional opponent, Thomas Rankin, after he insulted her during a debate. Cubin told Rankin, who has multiple sclerosis and is confined to a wheelchair, that “If you weren't sitting in that chair, I'd slap you across the face.”³⁴ Actress Mary Carey, star of such films as Pussyman's Decadent Divas 29 and Tit Happens, dropped out of the California gubernatorial race to care for her mother, a schizophrenic, who was injured while jumping from a four-story building.³⁵ Charlie Brown was running for Congress as a Democrat in Roseville, California.³⁶ Hunters in west Texas were stalking feral pigs,³⁷ rich Americans were vacationing in packs,³⁸ and an “unknown discharge” turned a half-mile section of China's Yellow River “red and smelly.”³⁹ Former heavyweight champion Trevor Berbick, the last man to defeat Muhammad Ali, died of a “massive chop wound” in Norwich, Jamaica;⁴⁰ and Lim Pov, a Cambodian taxi driver, was killed when two unknown assailants “chopped” him to death with a hatchet.⁴¹