by Anne G. Davies
White House definitions of winning
Keep apparatchiks madly spinning:
Blair's withdrawing British forces?
Cheney says: "It's the best of courses.
Deriders may think it indicates stress
But Deciders know it means success
Basra's becoming a haven of peace,
Why else would British troops decrease?
Iraqi units have been trained and burnished
The deadliest weapons have been furnished
Now they can handle their own defense."
The President agrees this makes perfect sense:
"Around Baghdad," he admits, "things are iffy,
And our surge won't fix them in a jiffy
But two or three years are all we need
For the Pax Iraqus to succeed.
Gates, my new Rummy, assents absolutely
(I didn't appoint him to dispute me.)
Condi concurs when I say dross is gold
And tells world leaders what she's been told.
With advisors like these, steady and strong
No way my decisions can ever be wrong."
Honesty is the grimmest fatality
Of an Administration mired in unreality.
If we don't defuse this obsessive warrior
We're going to be infinitely sadder and sorrier.
Anne G. Davies is a fund-raising writer by profession and a writer and versifier by avocation. Her work has been published on local and regional papers. She lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.