What Could Be Verse?

The First Meeting of the White House Iraq Group as Transcribed by Ogden Nash
(With apologies to Nash, Cagney as Cohan as FDR, and Calvin Trillan, but not George Bush.)

BUSH:
"To fight them there instead of here, we have to go to desert war.
Trust our good intel (wink,) but trust we'd dearly like to tell you more.
If it weren't such a no-brainer, it'd be a tough decision I'd abhor,
But a smoking gun's not the kind-of-a-thing a mushroom cloud's good for.
And that's (cha cha cha,) on the record." [Exit Bush.]

CHENEY:
"Tell our friend, reporter Judy, on deep background
Of the mass-destructin' booty to be found
Apres our bold and fearless and preemptive ground attack,
Among the old bombed out fields and towns of the new democratic Iraq.
Make sure it hits the streets in Sunday's Times.

Then amplify this pro-us news in all the big metropoli,
Abuse and deplete our strategic stockpile of Russerts and Stephanopoli,
Pump up our trumped-up evidence and play down my own bald ego.
To the Sunday morning chat shows' vaunted echo chamber boldly we go.
Be careful though, in a DemAdmin these acts would constitute war crimes."
[All chuckle sinisterly.]

LIBBY:
"Our bread of war remains unleavened, one lynchpin that we still lack
Is a definite connection between nine-eleven and Iraq.
Let's cherry pick that Prague report. Hadley! Matalin! Write a retort
To the few remaining vigilant reporters' questions as to just what sort
Of burden of proof we put on ourselves, our reasons and our rhymes.

To which reporters should we leak? It would be impolitic to overlap.
I'll spoon-feed Judy WMD's and Steve says Woodward owes him a good turn, so we've got the Times and the Post on tap.
An added plus, they're so power-hungry they'll embargo the secretest stuff long-term,
Like, until we've revealed that, 'we never concealed Iraq's total lack of nuke, chem and germ.'
And by then we'll be off to more pleasant, or at least more Syrian climes." [Bush re-enters, all stand.]

BUSH:
"Ain't y'all done yet? Geez, it's late.
My steaks won't wait, Laura's irate.
Tell you what, put down your pens and papers, go from here with what you've got.
Unless the Dems take back one house of Congress we will not get caught.
And our presents, (then our pasts,) will stay uncheckered."