Wolfie's exit

A sad bus with jammed windows and diesel fumes, the BushBus had been rolling on for almost seven years, entering strange cities like D.C., Crawford and Bagdad, turning dangerous corners like TaxCutsForTheRich and BanStemCellResearch, blowing tires here and there, running over pedestrians and generally fouling the air in several countries. With yet another year of tumultuous travel ahead, its occupants were getting restless and not a little upset with the overflowing toilet in the rear and the stench of urine permeating all the way to the front. There sat a group of advisers around the driver, Dubya, forehead streaked with several furrows but grin intact, the legendary smirk that already had made him a legend at the bus company. Those neocon advisors as they are now called had made it to the front of the bus by their ruthless self-assurance, grabbing seats by tricking passengers to the back of the bus. "Neo-Conservatives" were actually known as "NeoCons" to the passengers, people who had conned them with new techniques and old-fashion lies. None of this worked anymore as the back of the bus was a horror story of sick or dead passengers piled up ceiling high, some frantically writing tell-all books and others blurting out declarations to the press on their cell phones.

A motorcade of press cars followed the bus, most predicting the imminent end of the road or its tragic fall into some canyon. But no such pessimism was to be heard in the metallic blue van right behind, FoxNews . Its occupants were always very much in awe of the entire expedition, amazingly supportive of the driver and his advisers. Theirs was the biggest van, covered with ads from sponsors saying strange things like , THE SCIENCE OF THE GLYCEMIC INDEX, and DO YOU KNOW YOUR CREDIT SCORE. It was driven by a clever fellow named Rupert who was making a lot of money with the entire bus episode. He knew that controversy breeds viewership, viewership breeds sponsors, sponsors breed profits and profits breed power. Seventy six years old and power hungry, excellent eyesight and a strong engine, he was forever increasing his presence in the motorcade. He owned the NewYork Sun van and several other news cars further back. He was on that day eyeing the van just behind him as a potential acquisition. Its white sides had black Gothic fonts spelling:. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL . Here was a more than valid takeover target. He would grab it and plunk one of his boys in the driver seat.

Although Dubya had never read anything but parts of a few pages of the Bible, he felt great joy when he heard the news; it is always nice to know you are escorted by a favorable press. Rupert had been approving each and everyone of his detours, interviewing some of his advisers and co-pilots, blasting opposition through bullies like O'Reily . Dubya was about to lose his old sidekick Gonzales, sick at the back of the bus with massive constipation. Gonzales had just lost his own sidekick to a bout of embarrassing diarrhea. Then Dubya heard about Wolfowitz. He had been chief co-pilot for the Bagdad caper but had since been promoted up to drive the WorldBank, a wobbly and slow armored car at the back of the convoy. Rumor had it that he was being pushed out of WorldBank bogged down with radiator problems. On his mike Dubya said: "Paul Wolfowitz is a nice man and he loves poor people". This classic one-liner brought good humor to the bus as all knew that he had said something similar about Rummy before the latter was ejected six months ago from the front door of the bus.

Wolfie used to sit right behind the driver's seat before the bus made that unfortunate detour. So did Tenet and Dick and Perle and Rummy, all cohorts that favored Bagdad in spite of some passenger's howling protest. Those were immediately reported to FoxNews who properly destroyed their credential with instant slander, a trade trick mastered by the occupants of the van. The neocons are a smiling bunch with sharp elbows, all fueled by their peculiar truth, rock-hard convictions that they are right all the time, all of them, on all matters of travel and leisure. It was learned by some passengers that neo-cons were practically all ex-students of professor Leo Strauss of the Political Science School of the University of Chicago . The German expatriate prefered "lies that heal" to "truth that kills" The entire detour through Bagdad had been a lie that was going to heal the Middle East. Instead it killed many passengers and even more unfortunate Iraqi pedestrians. "They will greet the bus with flowers " had said Rummy while cracking his knuckles. "Slam dunk...we can present a great case to the passengers". .. .had volunteered Tenet munching on a baklava. "It won't cost a cent, they have oil" had said Wolfie sucking on a plastic comb.

The trip through Bagdad actually started well as smiling neocons faced the rest of the bus with funny quips and happy clever slaps into each others back. Pretty soon eggs started to be thrown, tires were slashed and oil nowhere to be found. It had to be brought in from outside the country under police escort. Wolfie through all this was a normal reaction to people not used to bus traffic and central plumbing, something transitory that would soon evaporate when everyone has SkyTV and MyPlace, two other businesses owned by Rupert. Four years later, the bus had not recovered from the episode and remaining passengers were looking towards the exits. Which brings the story back to Wolfie.

Of course no one was happy with Wolfowitz as it was now known that the Bagdad detour for the motorcade had in large part been influenced by him, referred to by the press as its chief architect. As the driver, the decider as he liked to be called, Dubya liked to surround himself with shorter men so as not to obstruct the rear view mirror. Short Fat Karl invented pranks to deride him, short funny Rummy created puns and short sinister Wolfy talked about the bus legacy, how future travel writers would laud that historic trip and its driver(s). The folks in WordBank hated him from the start when he brought into the armored truck his own cronies, all veteran of BushBus, none of which knew how to operate the 12-speed truck transmission or ask for advice from the existing crew to find out. They chatted at the front of the armored truck and threw their empty bags of Doritos through open windows, a no-no when you transport the donated cash from several bus companies. Worse still, Wolfie had a preexisting girlfriend in that truck, one that he had displaced into an expensive trailer towed behind WorldBank. This was done without true consultation and in violation of the driver's contract that forbid conflicts of interest. Because Bagdad had been and is still so painful to the entire motorcade, WorldBank occupants declared showtime, stopped the lumbering truck and tried Wolfie by a steep embankment. Dubya heard about the sordid details and wavered. The guy is slowing us down , he thought. Of course, this is May 2007 and the BushBus has but 18 months to go before his shift expires. He can't wait to drive to Crawford and get rid of his angst on the shredder at his ranch.

The bus now stinks of vomit, urine and something else as Gonzales finally had a bowel movement. The air is thick with expectation of worst kind. Dick's pacemaker is misfiring in tune with the out of sync engine on the badly bruised bus. Dubya has more furrows on his brow but his smirk is gone. Tenet is in the CBSNews car blabbing away, essentially saying that he never said "Slam Dunk" and everyone is blaming everyone for the Bagdad event. Fortunately Jesus is still smiling at Dubya on the dashboard and there is hope. Real Christian hope. Gerry Falwell died yesterday and his influence in Heaven could be felt throughout the motorcade, even as far back as the stalled armored truck by the roadside, even between the wide ears of a bewildered Wolfowitz, standing on the edge of a three hundred feet straight down cliff. Something is shining in his eyes. Could it be Jesus?. Something is shining even more in his raised right arm, the keys to the truck. From his soft-spoken trembling lips we can hear, but just barely: You assholes push me and I go down with the keys to WorldBank. No one called his bluff as none of the truck occupants had the right kind of walking shoes. Besides, there was money to haul, lots of it, and a trailer. A trailer? All had forgotten about the woman in the trailer. She was nowhere to be found. Oh well! a temperamental Muslim, that Shaha, someone muttered she had probably decided to walk, angry at everyone including her lover Wolfie for having been so dismissive of her. All she wanted back then was her seat in the middle of the truck, her Arabic expertise and her worldwide women's rights interest.

At that time, the whole motorcade had stopped and gone into reverse gear to catch up with the action. Gonzales had been ejected when the bus stopped at the head of the convoy, a fine time to clean the latrine as passenger Pelosi had snickered. All the press camera were aimed at Wolfie's bravado by the edge of the cliff. FOXNews was wildly creating NEWS ALERT, interrupting BREAKING NEWS, interrupting the regular show, AROUND THE WORLD IN FIFTEEN SECONDS, itself interrupted by bearded Bill Mays screaming out a soap commercial. This just in, Wolfowitz might die with the WorldBank.

Rupert Murdock was using the distraction to buy the white van. Bush was now standing in front of BushBus while Karl was looking at the timing belt. It's all about timing blurted the rotund little man . While they are all there in the back of the convoy, we sacked Gonzales and buried him in the ditch along with a bag of uneaten tortillas. Dubya smiled and looked ahead at the empty road. He thought it looked like TX34, the road to his Crawford ranch where he would find peace and contentment in just a few short months. He was secretly hoping that the next driver of the bus would be one of its most irritating passengers, Pelosi, Hillary, faithless critiques of him and Jesus. That'll teach'em. Historians will figure it out later.

Historians are still at odds as to what really happened next since for awhile no trace of the driver could be identified. All that we know from one of the few survivors is this BBC interview posted the same day. None of the press cars survived the apocalypse except the BBCNews. They were covering events in Darfur, miles behind the motorcade, when they saw the huge dust and smoke plume in the sky ahead. After making it to the head of the convoy through a back road, they noticed this lone man hiding behind a boulder on the high side of the road. The road itself was but a long crater that had collapsed the retaining cliff. Hundreds of cars lay 300 feet below, pell-mell, with no sign of life emanating from the rocky debris. The man drank from a bottle of green tea a bloke handed to him, took an enormous breath and slowly began:

I was riding the BushBus and needed to relieve myself really bad. The toilet was clogged. When the bus stopped, I quickly ran behind that rock and was relieving myself when I saw our driver in front of the bus looking ahead, his hand cupped over his eyes as if he was trying to identify something in the distance. So I looked at the road ahead and saw the fast moving car coming at us, first just a dot but soon a yellow truck, like a rental, y'know, Hertz or Penske. It never slowed down but just plowed right on.
It was terrible. The truck exploded when it hit the bus, a horribly bright flash. I must have fainted. When I regained consciousness, the earth was still rumbling. A good part of the mountain fell on the cars and trucks and together the whole thing fell into the canyon below. It's a miracle I'm alive.(nervous laughter) I think I'll take that rock home with me.

FBI , the Federated Bus Investigators , spent 2 years analysing the wreckage.All frames and sheet metal from all cars and trucks were re-assembled in several hangars. All body parts were frozen, DNA-sampled and properly identified. All except the driver of the yellow truck who was probably not a US citizen. Skeletal analysis determined that she was a middle-aged woman. DNA showed middle-eastern markings and teeth forensic were tentatively traced to a NY dentist. Of course there were national funerals in countless churches and synagogues. The mood was ugly. The angry Muslim woman was in all conversations, spreading anger and vengeance everywhere except Bagdad and a few retarded villages in Pakistan. This is when this BREAKING NEWS bulletin hit in full force at Fox, an organization recently acquired by MSNBC after the death of Rupert Murdock:

This just in from the FBI. The suicide bomber responsible for the motorcade carnage has now been identified as being Shaha Riza, Paul Wolfowitz girlfriend and source of the now resolved conflict at WorldBank. Positive identification came about as Dr Smileshein, a NY dentist, recognized his signature drill markings on the woman's molars. This puts an end to a long national interrogation while defusing the tensions with middle-eastern countries still suspected of having been behind the horrible tragedy. Our driver and decider Bill Clinton has now closed the book on that investigation, saying that his wife Hillary, Nancy Pelosi and Shaha had not died in vain during the Bush bus tour, since the cause of Muslim women and all women was now in good hands with him behind the wheel. Hugo Chavez, the new President of WorldBank named by Clinton was seen shedding a tear when he addressed a developing nations World Bank summit in the now reconstructing Bagdad. "Better truth that hurts than lies that heal" he was heard saying as the crowd guffawed. He was at that time referring to the $10 a gallon price of gasoline and his incapacity to help lower it. And now a message from our sponsor: HEAD ON - APPLY DIRECTLY OF YOUR FOREHEAD, HEAD ON - APPLY DIRECTLY OF YOUR FOREHEAD, HEAD ON - APPLY DIRECTLY OF YOUR FOREHEAD, HEAD ON - APPLY DIRECTLY OF YOUR FOREHEAD,