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Volume CCXXXIII, Number 30   February, 2003    Worcester, Massachusetts    Since 1770

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By Henry Cabot Lodge
Diplomatic Editor

Around the globe, statesmen and peace-loving citizens wonder whether the world will be plunged into war at the whim of an inscrutable idealogue. His quixotic pronouncements are scrutinized, syllable by syllable, in Moscow, London, Tokyo and the United Nations, for clues, however ephemeral, to his intentions, whether for good or ill.

"We simply have no insight into what motivates Dub Ya Bush," said Prof. Reginald Waincker, Regius Professor of Primitive Cultures at Jesus College, Oxford. "His actions and his word defy rational analysis, except as a case study of a megalomaniac bent on world domination to compensate for some inner failing," Prof. Waincker helpfully added.

Little is known about Dub Ya Bush, and his incomprehensible and rare public statements only add to the enigma. He is the son of Pop E Bush, who was briefly leader until he declared war on Japan by vomiting on the Japanese Prime Minister at a state dinner. Dub Ya is known to have inherited some of Pop E's speech impediments and proclivity for diplomatic faux pas.

Dub Ya's youth was reportedly wasted with drugs, alcohol and carousing. He is believed to have spent his college years living in a coffin surrounded by skulls and bones. After that, he largely vanished from sight until he was installed as leader by a coup engineered by the "Supreme Court", a shadowy group of oligarchs which arrogates to itself the power to overturn supposedly democratic elections in Dub Ya's unfortunate land.

Others look for answers in the small clique of Pop E's former henchmen who have clung to power by affixing themselves, leech-like, to Dub Ya. "We think that three nefarious characters are especially close to Dub Ya," said Vladimir Visanov, Director of the Far Old Western Division of the Kremlin's Institute for Foreign Affairs.

"These three, known as Kon Di, Dik Zha Ne, and Rum Me, are extremely violent and hard-line individuals, and their influence on Dub Ya can only be taken as very threatening to world peace." As further proof of the impossibility of negotiating with the Dub Ya regime, Visanov pointed to a shadowy adviser known only as Poindexter, whom, according to Visanov, has been linked to an even more sinister agent, Master Cylinder.

World leaders, noting Dub Ya's rigidity and ideological fervor, fear the impressive military regime Dub Ya has amassed by playing to the paranoia of his abject subjects. These wretched souls are denied basic human needs such as food, shelter and health care to pay for Dub Ya's military arsenals and a series of palaces inhabited by Dub Ya and his cronies. "Dub Ya has his people believing that the whole world is against them and that the only answer is military force. The people are literally homeless but still believe in Dub Ya's dreams of world domination," commented a source close to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

As Dub Ya continues to threaten countries around the world with attack and destruction, while boasting that his own country is invulnerable to attack, the world holds its breath and wonders: who or what can stop Dub Ya Bush and his plans for military conquest?

The bellicose leader Dub Ya Bush harangues his long-suffering people with paranoid ravings and threats of war.