The Massachusetts Spy Volume CCXXXVI, Number 154 January 11, 2007 

Dispatches from the War Fronts

HOT AIR FORCE
SORTIES AGAIN

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Despite heavy losses and setbacks, the indomitable gasbags of the 101.1st Hot Air Force are launching yet another all-out verbal assault on Baghdad.

The editorial page writers, columnists and neocon hacks who make up the offensive capability of the 101.1st Hot Air Force, fresh from their stirring verbal victories in the Battle of Baghdad (2003), the Second Battle of Baghdad (2004), the Third Battle of Ypres [Surely, Baghdad? – Ed.] (2005) and the Fourth Battle of Baghdad (2006), have reloaded their arsenal of rhetorical weapons precisely designed to obliterate the truth about the endless Iraqi quagmire.

Results of Army patrol on Haifa Street

Rest assured that the Hot Air Force is willing for others to suffer heavy casualties, like those seen here on Baghdad's Haifa Street, to attain victory in Iraq

This time, though, notwithstanding their past successes in prolonging a pointless and hopeless war notwithstanding the bloody toll it has exacted, the HAF sounds as if it is suffering – dare we say it? battle fatigue.

Devoted Spy readers have thrilled to the previous adventures of the tough-talking Leatherbutts of the 101.1st (see here), but their latest call to arms to be borne by others could not fail to appall [Surely, stir? – Ed.] the most jaded observer. As Hot Air Force Generalissimo Frederico Hiatt thundered in the Washington Post:

If the United States is not to abandon Iraq to its enemies [Iraq's or America's? Guess they didn't spend a lot of time on failure of antecedent at the Crimson – Copy Ed.], the U.S. mission needs to be sustainable, in both military and political terms, over the years it may take Iraqis to stabilize their country. Mr. Bush is betting that a boost in U.S. troops and aid can accelerate that process. If he is wrong, a continued American presence in Iraq may become untenable [And Freddie will let us know should that ever happen – Ed.]. The president must do more to persuade the country that the sacrifice he is asking of American soldiers is necessary. And if Iraqis do not deliver on their own commitments in the coming weeks, he must reconsider his strategy -- and suspend the U.S. reinforcements [who will already be in the snipers' gunsights – Ed.].

this just in . .

Since we went to press, we learned that rumors of the defection of Commander Friedman had been exaggerated. The long-time "brains" of the HAF has mobilized the 21,500 additional children unrelated to him, as long as Bush . . . raises taxes, presumably so Cmdr. Tom can share in the sacrifice.

Not to be under-[Surely, out? – Ed.] done, the boys at Hot Air Firebase Buckley, a/k/a National Review Online, have ordered our troops to put down their designer coffee and fight, just as the HAF'ers do from their Washington offices. (We can't make this stuff up – check it out.)

An open-ended commitment of other people's children and those children's taxes to the Iraqi inferno sounds good to the Generalissimo. We're sure he wishes his sons and daughter could risk life and limb in support of the "long-term" war the HAF fights for, but alas they are already ticketed for Harvard.

And the Generalissimo is not alone. HAF senior staff die-hards stationed at the Wall Street Journal editorial page are on board with gassing about fighting in Iraq until the last child of someone else dies:

We think he offered compelling reasons for skeptical Americans of good faith to back him, but the key will be deploying enough forces to accomplish the task. . . . Bush's words offered the hope that the new plan won't simply mean employing more troops to carry out a strategy that hasn't been working. Though widely described in the press as a troop "surge" or even "escalation," the number of additional soldiers being sent to Iraq is significant but not overwhelming. We think he offered compelling reasons for skeptical Americans of good faith to back him, but the key will be deploying enough forces to accomplish the task.

HAF planners must be thinking, hell, they're all illegal aliens anyway. The Army has already been reduced to recruiting a hayseed version of the Foreign Legion by dangling the hope of citizenship to those desperate enough to risk life and limb for it. HAF planners believe that there are enough illegales in Texas and California to man the ten new divisions that the Journal editorial curia has deployed in type.

The HAF mourns its fallen heroes

The HAF mourns the loss of comrades like Don Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and is very sad about those dead troops, too.

Nor should we forget the contributions of the Madame Chiang of the Hot Air Force – grateful immigrant child and troop morale booster Michelle Malkin. Although badly burned by the enemy – the Associated Press – in the HAF's Battle of Jamil Hussein, she's on board with the HAF too. Unlike most members of the HAF, who remain at their duty stations in Manhattan and Georgetown, Madame Malkin is reportedly staging a ground assault on the Green Zone following the footsteps of the 2005 courageous reconnaissance in force conducted by an HAF assault team and described in previous numbers of the Spy.

Perhaps the most moving aspect of the HAF's renewed assault on the airwaves and cyberspace is that they are proceeding in the absence of so many of their colleagues. Many have fallen in battle, like Don "What Me Worry?" Rumsfeld, "Special Plans" Supremo Doug Feith, creative writer Scooter Libby and the meticulously-groomed Paul Wolfowitz. Still others have apparently deserted the glorious HAF cause, including deep thinkers like former HAF Left Wing Commander Tom Friedman and even Space Patrol Col. Ollie North. Despite these bitter losses, Major General and HAF Intelligence Chief Billy Kristol remains ready to send others off towards the sound of guns, although his brutal schedule of well-paid lectures and seminars prevents him from hearing it close up.

Yet, after 3,000 U.S. dead, thousands more grievously injured and a death toll of Iraqis reliably estimated to exceed 625,000, the Hot Air Force bravely soldiers on, enduring the hot lights of Schlox Television, the airless radio studios in which so many HAF'ers are billeted, the cruel insults of bloggers seeking to inject a note of reality into the HAF's attacks, and most poignantly of all, the unmistakable fact that the Hot Air Force is fighting all by itself.

It's as if the sight of the Hot Air Force fully deployed, wings and jaws flapping, no longer distracts the American people from the daily otiose grind of American lives lost and broken by a vicious civil war, a war brought to you by – you guessed it, the 101.1st Hot Air Force.

 

IF HE COULD HAVE DONE AS WELL IN ENGLISH, PERHAPS HIS CAMPAIGN WOULD NOT HAVE TURNED INTO MERDE.

During the 2004 presidential primary, Senator John Kerry, a fluent French speaker, dropped a remark to an inquiring journalist for French television. Life on the campaign trail, he said, was"affreux,– that is, "awful" or "dreadful." Not "terrible," the obvious word, but "affreux," a more subtle choice. For the French, selecting the precise word is the equivalent of a firm handshake or a level look in the eyes in the United States. With two simple syllables, Senator Kerry had passed a crucial French character test.

– The New York Times, November 29, 2006 at B8.