The Jurassic man.

This is becoming comical, in a bitter sort of way. We have counted at least fifteen variations on this same headline in the past three weeks:

Bush says Iraq progress too slow.

The air of ponderous discovery in this announcement reminds us of the childhood fact we were all taught about the Apatosaurus -- back when it was Brontosaurus, in fact. (Or was it the Diplodocus? Run fact-check if time. --DH.) Namely, that if you -- having traveled in time back to the Jurassic -- were to step on the tail of the beast, you would be able to escape easily, since the nerve impulses would take several minutes to plod their way to the brain, owing to the length of the animal. In a similar way we imagine an enormously elongated George W. Bush, primaeval swamp-weeds dripping from his jowls, slowly turning his head to peer at a disturbance that began months, years ago, somewhere in the region of his anus.

Now of course the cynic would say that he has only begun to repeat this phrase (to anyone who will still listen), and more, to consider taking some action about it, out of fear brought on by the midterm election results. We say: pooh, cynics! To say that any politician, no matter how poor our opinion of him, would stoop to playing politics with warfare, is just flat-out mean. That's what every one of his supporters said during the lead-up to the war, and since his supporters are good, honorable people, we must of course take what they say very seriously.

So we must adopt the only other explanation that makes sense: the President is prehistorically stupid. (This would also explain his linguistic troubles, since he will only have evolved far enough to be comfortable with reptilian wheezes and moans.) We trust this explanation will please everyone.



(Oh, yes, indeed, this is childish. And, you may say, it's scarcely fair to make fun of a lame duck. Yet for one reason or another there are many Amerikansans who insist upon taking this man and his disastrous policies seriously, insisting on his honesty and his good intentions. Clumsy dinosaur pictures will do little to change this, yet our anger at the monster our time has created has not subsided -- we must blow off steam somehow. Let us have our melancholy chuckle. As pessimists we know that time has crueller tricks for us in store...)