“This just in!” says the news anchor, smoothing his silk tie, “American forces have surrounded Baghdad. We’ve got them in a stranglehold position, right General Franks?”
  General Franks appears on the left-hand side of the screen. “That’s right. We’ve got them in a vice-grip.”
  A red arrow pointing down, representing the Dow on the lower left-hand corner, suddenly points upward. Stocks are up now.
  Following a commercial break featuring an entire column of SUV’s throwing dust in a desert landscape, two ‘experts’ talk about the booty of war.
  “Yes,” says the first expert on the panel, “the war is good as won. We all know it’s not about oil, but should not the booty go to the winner?”
  “Of course,” says the second expert, smoothing his tie, “so long as the good name of Halliburton is not dragged into our oil interests in Iraq. I think that was very thoughtful of the Vice President to make this very, politically pre-emptive business decision. Very generous.”
  “True, and Halliburton has its subsidiaries, er (cough)—I mean, ‘other areas’ of interest.”
  The panel is cut-off for the promised War Update as the red ticker tape crosses the screen, having adopted the Pentagon’s name for the U.S. invasion, “OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM.” Subheading: Saddam Hussein comes out of the Woodwork.
  “You can cross that out,” General Franks says, talking as the footage of Saddam kissing a baby floats on the right. “I’m telling you! We dropped bunker busters on that guy for the third time. He’s dead!” The anchor returns to the screen. “So now,” he says, “you’ve heard it from General Franks!
  Our forces do not use bunker busters in neighborhoods for no reason, but as it is—that was one of the wealthy neighborhoods where those who are enriched from this regime live.” He turns to the new panel, another group of middle-aged white men in ties.
  “That’s right, Bob!” says the first expert, “No tears spent here, it was just a bastion of entrenched Saddam Hussein insiders, and you saw the pools!”
  “Yes,” says the anchor, “and a few floaters.”
  "Well,” the first expert continues, “we think our forces killed him, true enough. But this could well have been one of his many doubles we killed.”
  The second expert nods, saying, “But wait, how do you know we didn’t kill one of his doubles at the start of the war, at his compound?”
  “Not possible. His son was there.”
  “True. But maybe he has a double, too. Did you ever think of that?”
  “Look,” the third expert says, his chin dropping into another, profoundly larger chin, “it is always good to allow the analysts to analyze the tapes. And naturally, it is our job to analyze the analysts, isn’t it?”
  “That’s right,” says the second expert, “But if we commit to analyzing the analysts any more than we are doing already, we might find ourselves analyzing our own completely irrelevant, er, arses.”
  “You don’t say –“
  “This just in!” says the anchor, glancing down at his flag pendant and smiling, “now for an ‘alternative’ angle on the same angle of our balanced news segment, here is Abdulla Saad from Al-Jazeera.”
  “So what does it matter,” Abdulla says, “if the man in the film clip in question is one of Hussein’s body doubles? His doubles know everything he does, and some of them they are better looking.”
  “But,” says the anchor, “doesn’t it matter if it really is or isn’t Saddam?”
  “Ahh, but why should it matter to you, or for us? We make it work for us whoever it is, anyway—the doubles are also much healthier Saddam Husseins.”
  The Dow arrow on the lower left dips.
  “You heard it,” the anchorman continues, smiling largely, showing his very white teeth, “some dizzying comments from Al-Jazeera, friends. And they wonder why our Armed Forces targeted their offices in Baghdad! Now for a word from another panel of experts about how Al-Jazeera exists only as a voice of Middle Eastern propaganda—wait!” he continues, cuffing his ear to listen to his headphone.
  “This just in! Bush is awarding the bids for rebuilding Iraq to exclusively, American companies for $1.5 billion.”
  Now the anchorman turns to the camera, bleary eyed. “Here at Fox, we just want to salute your sons and daughters for giving their lives for—American Big Business. Thank you. More on Iraqi Operation Freedom coming up, following our commercial break…”