As part of his quid pro quo with Al Qaeda, newly elected Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero swiftly pulled his troops out of Iraq and formally returned Granada and Seville to Moorish sovereignty. Truth be told, things weren’t going swimmingly down in Baghdad anyways. Since President Bush declared an end to “major combat operations” last May, nearly 450 U.S. military personnel have died (though Sinclair Broadcasting puts the figure closer to zero) while scores of civilian contractors have been kidnapped. Every day since Thanksgiving, the front page of the paper has shown a swarthy man triumphantly shouting from atop the burned out carcass of a Humvee. And only twice was it the Schwarznegger’s Salvadoran gardener protesting a reduction in workers’ compensation benefits. Otherwise, the smoldering pictorials continuously depict Rumsfeld’s undermanned army getting its ass kicked. Muqtada al-Sadr’s Shites have taken over three cities in the south while a hoped-for truce with Sunnis has crumbled in Falluja.

With few viable options, the U.S. command, which summarily disbanded the Iraqi army only a year ago, is now asking former general Jasim Saleh to reconstitute his troops. I say half measures are no measures at all. Bring back Saddam! That would restore order by the weekend. It is all but clear after watching our boys’ charred bodies paraded through the streets that these savages deserved to be doused with mustard gas and butchered in their homes. And though reinstating Mr. Hussein would be an abrupt about-face for the administration, there would be minimal impact on the political landscape. Since there are no weapons of mass destruction, the regional balance of power will remain unaltered and as for the grim legacy of Baghdad’s torture chambers, coalition troops have kept things humming along quite nicely.

That recent photographs from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison documenting physical and sexual abuse have been “going around the world has been damaging,” conceded U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The diplomatic community unanimously condemned the graphic images depicting military police urinating on captives, detainees with wires attached to their genitals and a nude pyramid of hooded prisoners tonguing and fisting each other’s hairy butt holes. Commenting on the treatment of Iraqi prisoners, President Bush said, “I didn’t like it one bit. That’s not the way we do things in America.” Evidently, George doesn’t seem to recall a Crisco party at the Sling in San Francisco last month, but, hey, he hasn’t called either.

A dozen months ago, W. donned his flight suit and proclaimed, “mission accomplished.” The mission, apparently, was to make as much money as possible for Dick Cheney and his pals in the oil industry. Exxon just reported the highest first quarter refining profit in 13 years, and after adjusting for last year’s accounting change, swelled the bottom line by $600 million. No doubt, the recent 35-cent increase in gas prices didn’t hurt. And just wait until the official season driving kicks in and all those SUVs speed towards bug-infested lakes, delivering our nation’s youth into the hands of child-molesting camp counselors. Chevron Texaco has already inked a 2.56 billion gain, boasting an increase of 33%. Why, everyone’s getting in on the act – Saleem from my neighborhood service station just scored a new high-definition, plasma TV. Everyone, perhaps, except Halliburton. Despite price gouging Kuwaiti oil and gobs of juicy no-bid contracts with the White House, the corporation still managed to book a loss of $65 million. Unable to surmount a massive hike in revenues, the company blamed the negative results on charges related to asbestos settlements brought on by Cheney’s idiotic acquisition of Dresser Industries.

The vice president need not panic: Mr. Bush is nothing if not loyal. Donald Trump would have long axed George Tenant and Donald Rumsfeld by this point, yet the President is sticking to his guns. “I can assure you,” he told a group of Washington correspondents, “I’ll keep starting wars until my good friend Dick Cheney can cash out on top.” I wonder what Ralph Nader might think about that.