Advice From God

Dear God,

Senator Joseph Biden has declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008. I’m wondering, though, how Senator Biden thinks that he can win the Democratic nomination, much less the general election, given that Biden supported George W. Bush’s decision to start the war in Iraq.

If you were working for the Biden for President campaign, what would you do to compensate for this dramatic failure in judgment?

- Polly

Polly,

I would advise Senator Biden to do exactly what he has done in his campaign so far: Pretend that he never supported Bush or the Iraq War.

I am well aware that Joe Biden helped Bush start the Iraq War back in 2002 and 2003. I have a better memory than most people, however. Many Americans assume that, because Biden is a Democrat, he opposed the war and tried to stop Bush.

Many Americans also don’t know that two of Biden’s Democratic opponents in the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama and Dennis Kucinich, had the wisdom to oppose the Iraq War from the start. So, if I were on Biden’s campaign staff, I would advise him to make more statements like the one he made in January, 2007, completely ignoring the early insight of Obama and Kucinich on the Iraq War. Biden derided these opponents, pretending that they had not said anything on the Iraq War until recently, commenting, “You didn’t hear any one of them get in this debate at all until they announced for President.”

You and I may know that candidates Obama and Kucinich had developed better Iraq policies than Biden years ago. Then again, I’m not registered to vote, and most Americans who are registered to vote don’t know as much about the Iraq War as you do.

It’s a sad thing to say, but Senator Biden can probably count on the ignorance of American voters.

- God

Dear God,

Over the last two years, I’ve been hearing and seeing some very disturbing things about torture. Those pictures from Abu Ghraib just turned my stomach, and apparently there is a woldwide network of American “black site” prisons nobody knows anything about. I shudder to think what might happen behind those walls. Now I hear that the new Iraqi government that two thousand Americans died to establish has its own network of secret torture prisons, organized with the help of Iranian agents. As an American citizen, I feel a terrible sense of responsibility for these barbaric acts carried out by my government in my name. Sometimes I feel like we’re sliding back into the Dark Ages, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. What can I do?

-Terry

Terry,

Ah, the good old days. Don’t tell me you’ve got something against the Dark Ages. Christianity dominated Europe, and it was a good thing.

Come on, Terry. Major retail chains this very minute are wishing people “Happy Holidays,” for My sake! And you’re hung up on this torture business?

Seriously, torture? There’s no torture going on. What you’ve got at Abu Ghraib is a few bad apples on the night shift, doing fraternity hazing types of things. Other than that, what we’re talking about are innovative and unique ways of extracting information, unorthodox interrogation techniques, setting the conditions for successful debriefings.

If I hadn’t meant for you to passively accept unthinkably horrible behavior on the part of your own government, I wouldn’t have granted politicians and their lawyers the gift of the misleading euphemism, now, would I?

Besides, the End Times are coming. There’s nothing you can do but sit back, slap on some SPF 2000, and watch Ragnarok roll.

Cheers.

-God

Dear God,

I’m all confused about these news reports I’m hearing about the use of white phosphorus by American soldiers as a weapon in the seige of the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Bush Administration officials admit that the attacks using white phosphorus as a weapon, and not just as a device for illumination, did take place, but they say that it’s okay, because white phosphorus is not a chemical weapon.

I don’t get it. If white phosphorus is a chemical that is modified to be fit into explosives to be dispersed and cause fatal chemical burns on people, then how is it not a chemical weapon?

Also, the Pentagon says that they didn’t use white phosphorus as a weapon against civilians, but there were civilians in Fallujah when they attacked with their white phosphorus weapons, and those weapons used explosives to distribute the white phosphorus over a large area, so how could the Americans possibly have thought that they would be avoiding civilian deaths?

- Ryan

Ryan,

It’s simple, really. The white phosphorus isn’t a chemical weapon. For that matter, white phosphorus is not a chemical at all. It’s a divine substance I have specially designed for righteous retribution. The godly essence of white phosphorus, as the American generals well know, is that it only aflicts the unworthy. People without sin are not burned at all by white phosphorus. They are merely cleansed so that they have a fine glow of freshness on their skin, as well as hair that behaves.

So, you see, white phosphorus is not a weapon of mass destruction. No, no, no, no, no. It is a very precise, and very humane weapon, perfectly conventional, in a divine sense.

Never fear. You can trust your leaders to spray white phosporus over urban populations in a humane and civilized manner. After all, they’ve never lied to you before, have they?

- God