What the Heck Do You Know?
Special Operation Iraqi Freakout Edition, The Sequel
It has been brought to our attention that some of you didn’t do so well on the first Special Operation Iraqi Freakout questionnaire. Either you’ve been listening to too much Rush Limbaugh – experiments on lab rats have conclusively proven that his radio show not only rots your brain but is fattening – or you’ve been too distracted by Britney Spear’s belly button.
Either way, shame on you.
We could grade the test on a bell curve and let it go at that. Unfortunately, Mrs. Spinnaker, our grade three English teacher, drummed into us the essential unfairness of the bell curve, which didn’t allow idiots the opportunity to fail. This option being unavailable to us (we still have nightmares about Mrs. Spinnaker, Colm Feore and the Yugoslavian men’s synchronized chainsaw team), we have decided to retest.
As always, whatever you do, do not send completed surveys to us! If you do, we’ll be forced to send Mrs. Spinnaker over to your house to teach you the difference between the subjective and subjunctive cases. Brrrrrrrrr!
1) Why has Saddam Hussein not used chemical or biological weapons against American and British forces?
a) His generals got really drunk and lost the keys to the ignition.
b) Hussein is dead and his doubles don’t know where in the desert the weapons are buried.
c) One day in 1994, traveling between his palaces, Saddam Hussein came upon an elderly Kurdish woman. With tears in her eyes, she described the ghastly effects of poison gas on the children of her village. Hussein was deeply touched by the elderly woman’s story and, like any wise and benevolent leader would, he immediately had her thrown into prison, and her body likely ended up buried in a mass grave in the desert. Still, Hussein was haunted by the images the old woman planted in his head, and waited until all the TV stations in Baghdad had been destroyed by American bombing before using his gas – oops.
d) Could it be – and I just throw this out for the sake of completeness, so I hope you’ll forgive me – that he doesn’t have any?
2) Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney got his snout out of the trough long enough to tell Prime Minister Chretien that leadership sometimes requires politicians to make unpopular decisions. What should we make of this?
a) This is just the kind of dedication to democracy that made Mulroney the most hated federal leader in Canada’s history.
b) Are you kidding? Mulroney was so far up the President’s ass he makes Tony Blair look positively hostile to the United States.
c) It takes a strong will to be so consistently, disastrously wrong.
3) Madonna has canceled the debut of her video for the song “American Life” because she was worried its war theme wasn’t appropriate during a, umm, war. So, what?
a) Madonna is still around?
b) Are you kidding? This way, she can milk the video for another few months of controversy. The woman may not be much of singer (or writer…or actor…), but she sure knows how to market herself!
c) No, seriously. Madonna is still around?
4) Do American forces control Basra?
a) Wednesday.
b) The randy watershed elastic iodine machine.
c) Uhh…Thursday?
d) The larch…the larch.
5) What qualifies Ahmed Chalabi to lead a post-Hussein Iraq?
a) Embezzling as much as $70 million from Jordan’s Petra Bank, which he founded, then fleeing the country.
b) Attempting a failed coup as head of the Iraqi National Congress, resulting in accusations that the INC misused $97 million in American congressional funding and forcing him to flee the country.
c) He’s the best Donald Rumsfeld and the hawks in the Bush administration could come up with.
6) Where did Americans get the idea that this would be a short war?
a) All the Iraqis wearing “Bomb me, I want to be liberated!” t-shirts.
b) Everybody in the Bush administration was claiming that after the war started Iraqis would rise up en masse to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and Americans believed them because of the brilliant success of that strategy in Vietnam.
c) Americans were on psychotropic drugs.
7) Which of the following statements was recently made by proponents of the war on Iraq and which were made in the 1950s by supporters of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his work in the House Un-American Activities Committee?
a) “These conservatives are relatively few in number, but their ambitions are large. They aspire to reinvent conservative ideology: to junk the…conservative commitment to defend American interests and values throughout the world…in favour of a fearful policy of ignoring threats and appeasing enemies.”
b) The “Marxist-dominated Catholic community” is made up of “traitors.”
c) “There’s nothing that has the power to immunize against thought as much as ideology – and if you’re an ideologue, evidence doesn’t matter, facts don’t matter. You’re an ideologue, which means that [you hold] a priori beliefs which cannot be dislodged by any evidence or any experience.”
d) “I’m sick and tired of these left-wing America haters!”
8) The Defense Policy Board advises the Secretary of Defense on defense policy. Former chair Richard Perle and at least eight of the 29 other members have direct ties to defense contractors who stand to make a lot of money from the war on Iraq. What is a reasonable response to this?
a) Nice work if you can get it.
b) Heck – they work hard in the defense of liberty, and they deserve to be rewarded. Uhh, okay, $75 billion is a hell of a reward, but the principle hasn’t changed – now, we’re just haggling over the price.
c) Pass the remote, I wanna watch Law and Order: Parking Offences.
d) I’m glad my Welfare was cut so patriots like Richard Perle could make the world safe for democracy.
e) Gee, how can I get me a piece of that?
9) What aspect of this war is most reminiscent of the Vietnam war?
a) The lies told to make the populace believe the war was necessary.
b) The lies told to make the populace believe the war would be easy.
c) The increasing difficulty troops on the ground have telling the difference between civilians and soldiers, leading to a paranoid atmosphere guaranteed to result in American military atrocities against civilians.
b) NOTHING! NOTHING! THERE ARE NO PARALLELS BETWEEN IRAQ AND VIETNAM!
10) I know it’s so last year, so last war, but who has committed the most money to helping rebuild Afghanistan?
a) The Bush administration (hint: $0).
b) Congress (hint: $435 million).
c) Iran (hint: $900 million).
11) After Peter Arnett stated a few generally accepted, but negative truths about the American war effort, he was fired by NBC. Why?
a) Not using enough gel in his hair.
b) He had spinach caught between his teeth on international television.
c) NBC is owned by General Electric, which has ties to the Pentagon.
d) Arnett has lost his figure since the first Gulf war and no longer looks good in faux military fatigues.
12) What qualifies American General Tommy Franks to administer Iraq after the war?
a) The quick wit and charm that helped him become a regular on Hollywood Squares.
b) His ability to command tanks in combat situations makes him uniquely able to rebuild destroyed water mains and electricity grids.
c) His boyish grin.
d) Richard Perle had to be ruled out because of his conflict of interes – pardon me, his perceived conflict of interest.
13) How can Ontario Premier Ernie Eves letter of support to President Bush best be summed up?
a) “Please, sir, can we have some more?”
b) “I’m not an ignorant, war-mongering, Provincial pol, I just play one on TV.”
c) “Kiss kiss, bang bang.”
14) How can the United States win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people?
a) Send them flowers, chocolates and a sweet Hallmark Card.
b) Bomb their cities, because of the brilliant success of that strategy in Vietnam.
c) Stop the inhumane invasion of their country.
d) Stop the inhumane airing of Survivor: Azores.
15) According to Lieutenant-General William Wallace, the United States military did not simulate guerilla warfare in its pre-war strategy sessions. What game did the US use?
a) Super Mario Brothers: Foozle Attack.
b) Grand Theft Auto.
c) Lara Croft, Tomb Raider.
d) Age of Empires.
e) Sim Armageddon.
f) Where in the World is Saddam Hussein?
16) Where in the world is Saddam Hussein?
a) You don’t see him until you’ve completed the seventh level of the game.
b) Hangin’ with his homies in the hood.
c) EuroDisney.
17) What should be done about the current American use of depleted uranium anti-tank shells, thought by some to be a serious health hazard?
a) Serve the shells some coffee – maybe that’ll perk ‘em up!
b) Ask Russia for advice – they’re very good at denying the release of radioactive materials into the environment.
c) What, non-nuclear bombs that obliterate city blocks and leave mushroom clouds in their wake aren’t destructive enough for ya?
18) Television viewers are starting to tune out the war. How can the all-news networks lure them back?
a) Get Elizabeth Taylor to guest star.
b) Have a vote on which tank division should be thrown out of the war effort.
c) Have the embedded reporters wear skimpy cheerleader costumes.
d) Train the night vision goggles on a Vegas strip joint.
19) How can you tell a videotape of Saddam Hussein is fake?
a) He stutters more often than Max Headroom.
b) He’s dancing the Macarena.
c) Behind him you can make out sunny Acapulco.
d) The CIA is 99 per cent certain the tape is genuine.
20) Why does the United States not want to allow a democratic government to immediately take over post-war Iraq?
a) The Shiite majority in Iraq will likely ally itself with Shiites in Iran, making the United States responsible for the creation of an actual “axis of evil.” The irony is too much for even Donald Rumsfeld to ignore.
b) The US won’t get any frequent voter points.
c) It’s the oil, stupid.
