Press Conference by Secretary & Deputy Secretary of Defense

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Good morning. The President cannot join us for this brief right-wing policy advertisement with you fine sedated members of the press, as he is currently still kung-fu skull-cracking Arab madmen in dreamland.

SECRETARY WOLFOWITZ: The reason we called you all here today is to refute recent leaks about the logistical details surrounding the upcoming glorious occupation and noble democratization of Iraq. We are prepared and committed to "nation building" - which need we remind you, was one of the fundamental planks of the President's foreign policy platform during the 2000 campaign. It's one of dozens of reasons he won in an unprecedented landslide.

(Laughter.)

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Good Gosh. No. He did. Yes. Yes. No. Don't laugh. I don't think that's professional. No. He did. "Nation Building." Yes. Not Gore. Yes. He Did. Let's just agree to disagree.

Anyway, regardless of your biased liberal bungling of basic historical facts, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz and I will take four or five questions at this time. Let's begin. Helen?

Q: The build-up of American forces in the Persian Gulf region would appear to be nearing completion. At this time, can you talk briefly about... the aftermath?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: What aftermath? We bulldoze the flame-broiled piles of heathen, still-quivering limbs into pits, douse them in gasoline, then have ourselves a big old sand-pig roast. What else is there to say?

Q: To date, formal, unchanging government estimates on the financial impact of the upcoming war have been all but impossible to come by. Can you tell us, specifically, how much it's going to cost, and how much faster Americans can expect our already-imploding economy to completely collapse?

DEPUTY SECRETARY WOLFOWITZ: Bellyaching about the economy and dumb poor people without jobs or enough to eat is for panty-waist Democrats and journalists. We're warriors. And truth be told, this war and the military budget increases that accompany it are best thing to happen to our Republican sugar-daddies since those towelhead bastards hit us back on 9/11. Which is to say that it all goes back to Commandant Karl's edict numero uno: "Win at any cost: this war is about 2004."

Q: It was recently disclosed that the Pentagon has ordered over 50,000 body bags in anticipation of potential mass casualties suffered due to chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Can you tell us how many soldiers you expect to be killed during the seizure of Iraqi oil fields?

DEPUTY SECRETARY WOLFOWITZ: Goodness gracious! Look. Colored enlisted boys are no different from spotted owls and manatees - plentifully disposable. The important thing to remember here is that this President Bush won't screw up like his sissy daddy did. No sir. We intend to cram Saddam's cous-cous squirting caboose down his tin pot despot throat and then emerge victorious in the 2004 election. So however many lower class corpses it takes to remain submerged in this politically beneficial quagmire of endless Pavlovian terror alerts, well then that's how many are needed. Hell, we'll order another 50,000 body bags if necessary.

Q: Secretary Rumsfeld, have you been working out, sir?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Indeed I have. That's pure American muscle you see bulging through these liver spots. Yessir. It's firm. It's taut. Indeed - these are the biceps of a 58, 59 year-old man. And I don't mean that in a faggoty way. One more question.

Q: As the heads of the Pentagon, and by extension, the whole US military, does it bother either of you that you've been turned into little more than two political chess pieces - being exploited to help keep Americans in a perpetual state of paranoia, enabling a select group of civilian, corporate-sponsored multi-millionaires to force their narrow agenda of tax cuts for those who don't need them and backward, draconian social morals on the world's supposedly greatest democracy?

DEPUTY SECRETARY WOLFOWITZ: Not me. You, Rummy?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Jumpin Jehosophat no! Look, for guys like us - educated, wealthy white men who have never tasted the bitterness of battle, all that stuff is just background noise. This is about the killing. The indiscriminate, wholesale, erotic, power-mad killing.

Capiche? Good. Press conference over.