My Aisling

Dandelion Liberals

I don't just mow my lawn, I give it a manicure and pedicure. Every thing that grows has its place. The smell of freshly mowed grass abounds. I breath deeply and forget the sweat-drenched clothes, the legs and shoulders that never used to ache like this. The feeling lingers even after my shower, like a teenage love. It fills me to overflowing. My lawn is all I can think of. It is still on my mind as I drift to sleep hours later and think I can catch a whiff of it carried along the night's breeze.

Then I wake up in the morning. {Poof!} What lawn? I push blades of cut grass out of my way as I go to my car. I wipe grass off my shoes before I go into the building. The lawn is no longer a friend for me. Then a couple of days later, I notice the dandelions. Little yellow medallions that were pretty 40 years ago but now just bring memories of my dad making wine with one of his buddies. He tried to tell me how good it was, but I noticed he never made it again.

Dandelions have come to represent something evil to me. They only come when the hard work is done. In fact, they cause some of the hard work. And only young, uninformed, and inebriated people like them.

So Iraqi war combatants, perhaps mercenaries from Iran and Syria or simply leftovers from Saddam's version of F-Troop (no disrespect intended to Larry Storch), are captured as they attempt or plot to kill us. Literally, to kill us - to burn our bodies and hang them off of bridges. In return, we incarcerate them and intend to extract information through interrogation. They are non-responsive to simple Q&A, so we weigh our options.

We could bring in the Israelis. That would require soundproof rooms and a burial area. They bring their own tools.

We could bring in the Brits. That would require a little more time. Sleep deprivation is one of their main tools. They also need access to water pressure for the fire hoses. It may seem like an odd request, but it is a technique they perfected on the Irish and it is known to work well.

We could bring in the Turks. But they always seems to believe the prisoner when he first says, "I don't know anything," then they kill him. Doesn't really fit our end objectives.

We could bring in Saddam for advice. He's had years and years of practice in amputations, rapes, torturing children in front of their parents, a little shred here, a little shred there. But I'm not sure we could get the paperwork through.

OK, let's do it ourselves. But how? Well, Arab men are very prideful. Anyone willing to strip away the political niceties knows that lying is an intricate part of their life. They lie themselves into great and fanciful accomplishments. That's the only explanation for why they continue to go after Israel - they begin to believe their own lies about how strong they are. Let's go after their pride.

Get one naked and put him on a leash. Have GI Jane walk him around like a dog. I know - this is a change in culture. Men pay for that treatment here - and pay a lot more if a whip is in the other hand. But for Iraqi men, they will collapse under the shame of it all.

Let's also get them naked and show them a video of the National High School Cheerleading Competition. "Hey, Joe, get the interpreter and tell them I want them to do that one. You think we can get a CD of some marching music anywhere in this desert?" We are at war. And war isn't pretty. But if cheerleader re-enactments will save the lives of some of our boys, then cheerleader re-enactments it is.

Then, while we paying close attention to the life and death situations abroad, to the intracacies of the economic balance between expansion and inflation, to the world oil supply and how we can break this stranglehold that terrorist-sponsoring Saudi Arabia has, to the scandal in the UN that explains why France and Russia wanted to prevent Saddam's ouster at any cost ... while we are devoting our attention to the important stuff in this world ... the dandelions sprout at home.

Teddy (Make yourself useful, get me a drink, and don't drown yourself in the process) Kennedy finds some righteous indignation: "On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked, 'Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open?' Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management."

Wow, talk about a drunken misperception. The only thing we ever reopened under new managment was Club Fed - the old Mustang Ranch in Neveda when the owners filed bankruptcy and we didn't want the girls out of work. In Iraq, we splash water on their faces, and Kennedy acts as if we are drowning them. Well, I guess one typically goes to what one is familiar with.

By the uproar, you could easily be mistaken into thinking this was a newly discovered issue. Turns out the Congress knew about it in January and March. "But wait, you can't expect us to actually read, can you? You have to come over and talk to us," the Dandelion Liberals chant in unison. I guess they score a point for consistency - even though it is their job to declare war, most never bothered to read the intelligence made available by W before the votes to go into Iraq.

What I find most amazing in the liberal response is their utter lack of peripheral vision. They cry and scream to anyone who will listen. All they want is attention. Surely, they think, this will hurt that dastardly Bush. Yet they are blinded to Arabs in Pakistan looking for any reason to cause trouble - now they are digging up 90 year old graves of fallen soldiers from WWI.

Dandelion Liberals. It is time to cut the grass.