CART MASTER:
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
[cough cough...]
[clang]
[...cough cough]
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead! Ninepence.
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out…
[rewr!]
…your dead!
[rewr!]
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
CUSTOMER:
Here’s one.
CART MASTER:
Ninepence.
DEAD PERSON:
I’m not dead!
CART MASTER:
What?
CUSTOMER:
Nothing. Here’s your ninepence.
DEAD PERSON:
I’m not dead!
CART MASTER:
‘Ere. He says he’s not dead!
CUSTOMER:
Yes, he is.
DEAD PERSON:
I’m not!
CART MASTER:
He isn’t?
CUSTOMER:
Well, he will be soon. He’s very ill.
DEAD PERSON:
I’m getting better!
CUSTOMER:
No, you’re not. You’ll be stone dead in a moment.
CART MASTER:
Oh, I can’t take him like that. It’s against regulations.
DEAD PERSON:
I don’t want to go on the cart!
CUSTOMER:
Oh, don’t be such a baby.
CART MASTER:
I can’t take him.
DEAD PERSON:
I feel fine!
CUSTOMER:
Well, do us a favour.
CART MASTER:
I can’t.
CUSTOMER:
Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won’t be long.
CART MASTER:
No, I’ve got to go to the Robinsons’. They’ve lost nine today.
CUSTOMER:
Well, when’s your next round?
CART MASTER:
Thursday.
DEAD PERSON:
I think I’ll go for a walk.
CUSTOMER:
You’re not fooling anyone, you know. Look. Isn’t there something you can do?
DEAD PERSON: [singing]
I feel happy. I feel happy.
[whop]
CUSTOMER:
Ah, thanks very much.
CART MASTER:
Not at all. See you on Thursday.
CUSTOMER:
Right. All right.
Courtesy Monty Python’s Flying Circus in Australia ^[1]

So, al-Zarqawi is dead . . . again. Haven’t we seen this before?

• Early 2002: Afghan Northern Alliance members report that al-Zarqawi had been killed by a missile attack in Afghanistan. However, Kurds claimed he had not died in the missile strike, but was severely injured. Apparently, he went to Baghdad in 2002 to have his leg amputated.
• On October 7, 2002, President Bush gave a speech that repeated this claim as fact, one of several of Bush’s primary examples of ways Saddam Hussein had aided, funded, and harbored al-Qaeda.
• Colin Powell repeated this claim in February 2003, in a speech to the UN, and soon it was all over the press that al-Zarqawi had a prosthetic leg.
• In March 2004, an insurgent group in the north of Iraq issued a statement saying that al-Zarqawi had been killed in April 2003 at the beginning of the war, unable to escape the missile attack because of his prosthetic leg. This was a useful myth, but a myth, nonetheless
• In 2004, Newsweek and Knight-Ridder both claimed that the prosthetic leg story was incorrect.
• In the video of the Nick Berg beheading, the person identified as al-Zarqawi did not have a prosthetic leg.
• CNN reported that al-Zarqawi was captured by Iraqi forces sometime during 2004 and later released because his captors did not realize who he was.
• In May, 2005, an Islamic website said that a deputy would take command of Al-Qaeda while al-Zarqawi recovered from injuries sustained in an attack. However, later that week, the website retracted its report about his injuries, claiming he was in fine health and running the jihad operation.
• In September, 2005, Sheikh Jawad Al-Kalesi claimed that al-Zarqawi was killed in the Kurdish region of Iraq at the beginning War in Iraq, as he was meeting with members of the Ansar al-Islam group. He said that al-Zarqawi was a ploy by the United States, an excuse to continue the occupation.
• On November 20, 2005, it was reported that al-Zarqawi was killed in a coalition assault on a house in Mosul; five people were killed in the assault while three people died using suicide belts of explosives. Al-Zarqawi was not identified in the remains found at the site.

Now he’s dead again. Should we believe this, or is it a bit of propaganda again? I saw pictures of what was left of the house, and I know what kind of devastation a 500-lb. bomb causes. A couple of them apparently hit the house he was in. Yet, the pictures of his “corpse” showed only a couple of bruises, cuts and contusions. I would have expected not much to be left of him. Then the reports came out that he wasn’t dead, but some soldiers found him wounded, had him secured to a stretcher, where he died.

Coincidentally, the guy who led us to him died in the blast, too. (Way to save that $25 million that was on al-Zarqawi’s head!)

The question remains, is he really dead? I don’t know. The way this administration bends facts, avoids truth, and outright lies to the public, we can’t be sure. For all we know, it could be a ploy by the Bushies to show progress in Iraq in order to pump his numbers so he can campaign for Congressmen in trouble for the fall elections.

It wouldn’t surprise me, as this Administration and Republicans in general don’t care about anything except staying in power, so they can abuse it and the American people. They’ll put any story, true or not, out there to push their favorability ratings up. They’ll spread lies and obfuscations. They’ll hide facts. The Constitution, laws, and the will of the people be damned. We don’t need anyone counting the votes, screw the pre-election polls and the exit polls, they’ll make the election results what they want, so that they win. As Josef Stalin supposedly said, “It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.”

But as soon as I heard about the al-Zarqawi story, something about it smelled. It still does. And it wouldn’t surprise me if in a year, we are still looking for him. Again.