or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
•
"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
•
"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
September 15, 2006
Hey, Paul Wolfowitz, Gimme Five!
More from Hubris by Michael Isikoff and David Corn:
In October 2001, [Wayne] Downing, [Paul] Wolfowitz, and other proponents of a war with Iraq thought they had yet more ammunition for the case against Saddam. A series of deadly anthrax-laced letters had been sent to the Capitol Hill offices of Senator Daschle and Senator Patrick Leahy and to several newsrooms. Mylroie asserted that Saddam was behind the mailings. An early forensic test of the anthrax letters (which was later disputed) appeared to show that the anthrax spores were highly refined and "weaponized." To the Iraq hawks, the news was electric. "This is definitely Saddam!" Downing shouted to several White House aides. One of these aides later recalled overhearing Downing excitedly sharing the news over the phone with Wolfowitz and Feith. "I had the feeling they were high-five-ing each other," the White House official said.
"I had the feeling they were high-five-ing each other." By a wonderful coincidence, "five" is also the number of people killed by the anthrax:
Robert Stevens
Kathy Nguyen
Ottilie Lundgren
Thomas Morris Jr.
Joseph Curseen.
How happy they would have been to know their deaths would be the cause of celebration in the halls of power.
And how lovely that after Wolfowitz & co. found they couldn't use the murder of their fellow Americans to start a war, they lost all interest in who actually HAD killed them.
If you can think of any jokes about this, I encourage you to share them. I got nothing.
Posted at September 15, 2006 07:12 AM | TrackBackYou asked for a joke. This is a joke, although I recognize it may not be to everyone's taste:
What's better than the fall 2001 anthrax attacks?
The fall 2001 anthrax attacks - AND A PONY.
To paraphrase Leona Helmsley, death is for the little people.
Posted by: Tirebiter in Sector R at September 15, 2006 09:31 AMI remember the suspected-to-be-anthrax mailing to Congress and the resultant televised scene of Congressional members and their too-vital aides scurrying down the long, broad steps; an image much like the anonymous animated scene stored in my memory of rivers of rats pouring down the gangplank of a docked ship.
Meanwhile, D.C. and Congressional mailworkers continued their labors uninformed.
God that was funny. I laughed till I wept.
Posted by: cavjam at September 15, 2006 10:34 AMQ: How many anthrax spores can you fit in a VW?
A: 76,387,912,465
*****
1: Say, I hear you went out with Ann Thrax the other night.
2: That's right!
1: Get any?
2: You kiddin'? I fucked her spore!
*****
There once was an anthrax spore
That came through the congressional door
It wanted to see
Representatives plea
For forgiveness for screwing the poor!
Isn't the juicier story, WHO in fact is the prime suspect in the anthrax mailings??
last I heard, and hey, it'd be cool if I was wrong,
the top suspect is a *RIGHTWING CHRISTIAN WHO WORKS FOR THE FBI*
too bad the "liberal media" never seized on that. can you imagine the ruckus if it had turned out to be some Left-leaning FBI agent?
the weaponized anthrax was traced to an FBI LAB!!
nice focus on the red herring, though. again, we get chumped by chess playing neoThugs.....
As I recall the anthrax story disappeared from the headlines about the time it was revealed that the stuff (Ames strain) came from the US Army biowarfare lab at Ft. Detrick.
That's when it became a non-story.
To put it another way: That's when the press lost interest.
That's worth at least a jaded smile.
ANTHRAX??
(beat, beat)
I DON'T EVEN KNOW HER!!
Posted by: mathpants at September 15, 2006 03:31 PMAnybody notice Wolfie at the recent World Economic Forum (I think) in Singapore? He said (approximately) that trying to get a country to do something that it doesn't want to do is like pushing on a locked door. I wonder whether he learned that lesson in Iraq? Or perhaps, in Vietnam?
Posted by: Aaron Datesman at September 20, 2006 07:39 AM
