I(raq) Love It!
A new slogan for Mickey D has Baghdad gettin' jiggy all on it!
by Alan Bisbort

Oct. 16, 2003 -- HARTFORD (apj.us) -- With friends like George W. Bush and Tony Blair, who needs enemies?

More to the point, who needs satire?

We sure don't, not when the daily news provides it with such predictable, wide-eyed earnestness.

Take, for example, the conference being held right now in London. Un-ironically called "Doing Business in Iraq: Kickstarting the Private Sector," the event showcases investment opportunities in a liberated Iraq. Never mind that, during the time the conference is being held, three suicide bombings have taken place in Iraq, as well as several ambushes, and at least 8 American soldiers were killed. As my Republican Congresswoman Nancy Johnson so unambiguously put it in a recent letter to her constituents, "cessation of major hostilities" took place five months ago.

Thus, this conference, brainchild of the US-Iraq Business Alliance (a Pentagon offshoot), is right on the Bush-Blair schedule. Just ignore those body parts distributed across your screens on the evening news.

To add the appropriately hallucinogenic dose of hubris, Brian Wilson, Tony Blair's special representative on trade and reconstruction in Iraq, told conferees: "Let me say straightaway that this conflict in Iraq, now thankfully behind us, was not about business or about oil. It was about liberating the people of Iraq and giving them the chance to enjoy a life free from tyranny."

Though it's not surprising that a US-Iraq Business Alliance exists, what's baffling is that these corporate "liberators" believe the Iraqis-their prospective customers-will do business with two countries (the U.K. and the U.S.) they now despise. Nonetheless, among the undeterred firms lining up for a slice of the Iraqi Pie is McDonald's. Ronald and his Cholesterol Crew will, we're told, open Iraq's first franchise soon in downtown Baghdad.

Prospective menu items under Baghdad's gleaming golden arches will surely include some of the following:

• The McChickenhawk Hero Sandwich: Pure 100% yellow-bellied chicken injected with steroids and petroleum, broiled over fire and brimstone, and served on two quivering white buns with a holster of Freedom Fries, some aviator goggles, a sock-filled jockstrap, and a six-shooter that fires real blanks.
• The Vanilla Rush-shake: A ten-gallon tub pumped up with hot air created from a thimble's worth of ingredients. The shake comes not in varying sizes but in varying levels of potency, from the highest (dosed with enough Oxy-contin to kill a horse) to the lowest (dosed with enough Oxy-contin to give a Ditto-head an original thought).
• The Bunker Buster: Six all-beef patties plastered atop sixteen erect inches of fried dough, slathered in oleomargarine and deep fried in a vat of pure Halliburton oil, covered in mayonnaise, tartar sauce and powdered sugar (powdered saccharine for weight watchers) and served on a skewer in the shape of an oil derrick, topped with a mound of pure Texas barbecue, left over from the last GOP fundraiser at the Crawford Ranch of the Commander in Chief.
• The Mother-Of-All-Unhappy Meals: In tribute to the former happy relationship the Bush Family enjoyed with the Hussein Family, this fun item will include giveaway portraits of Uday, Qusay and OJay Hussein as well as one of Rummy shaking hands with Saddam. Be careful, though. You may end up gassing your own people.
• Condi Rice Pudding: Looks exotically nutritious on the outside but it is actually filled with marshmallow fluff and cotton candy. It takes four orders to put a dent in the average Baghdaddy's hunger.
• The Colon Poweller: Within minutes of ingesting this gristly beefwich, you'll be blasting the porcelain with several weeks worth of backed up poop that had been squatting in your colon; and semi-colon; like an al-Qaeda sleeper cell. Comes with a silly little vial of sand that you can hold up at the podium when addressing the United Nations.
• The Bring 'Em On Burger: A tiny patty of ground turkey, served with all the blood-red ketchup you can fit on your styrofoam platter. That's it. Just a tiny patty and two pickle balls. If you don't like it, see Assistant Manager Mullah Omar Ashcroft.
• The Shock and Awe Salad: For vegetarians.
• The Halliburton Happy Meal: The tongue of Rush Limbaugh marinated in painkillers and grilled over the smoldering rubble of a Baghdad car bomb, served with tooth-rotting carbonated beverage manufactured by whatever soft-drink franchise has negotiated a rigged deal with the U.S.-controlled Iraqi governing council.
• Have a shake! Place milk and ice cream in a large cup, set by the curb on any Baghdad street and wait for the inevitable explosion to whip them to a deliciously foamy froth!
• The McRisk Sandwich: Place one hapless US army infantry detail along a road between two hidden clumps of Baath Party loyalists armed with grenades and guns, and serve the resulting headlines to an increasingly sickened American public.

And, finally, to pump up what is expected to be a "hard-sell" marketing campaign, George W. Bush has agreed to play Ronald McDonald as a "scary clown," one who tries to put a happy face on an unsalvageable disaster.

Small figurines of Gov. Bush, reading "The Little Caterpillar" -- suitable for mounting on your dash- or dart-board -- will be given away to every fifth customer, or every customer who has consumed a fifth of Southern Comfort.

Alan Bisbort is a columnist for the Hartford Advocate. His most recent publication is "What Happened Here? New York City" (Pomegranate Communications).