My Fellow Americans:

A few months ago, I flew onto an aircraft carrier and announced that the war in Iraq was over–and that we had won.

Well, I was wrong.

Also, as it turns out, I was wrong about the threat that Iraq posed to the US through weapons of mass destruction. Turns out, they didn't have any left. They either got rid of them or hid them so well that, well, not even they could find them.

And, while I may have unintentionally misled all of you about Iraq's ties to terrorism, there are certainly terrorists in Iraq now. All I can say is, “whoops.”

So, since (with the advise of my military and security advisers, some of whom had been itching to shoot something for over a decade), I got us involved in this mess, I now have to ask for enough money to get us out of it. Meanwhile, I have to convince the UN that they really want to help us straighten things out without totally admiting that I screwed up. After all, it's about national honor now, and having the president of the United States called a liar by the rest of the world is an insult to you, the American people. After all. roughly 20% of you, with the help of a few electoral irregularities, wouldn't have elected me into office if I was a liar, would you have?

So we'll need roughly 86 billion more dollars this year to pacify Iraq. Pacify is a high-falutin' way of saying “kill all the people that disagree with us, and pay off anybody sitting on the fence to join our side.” Bullets, bribes, and body bags cost a lot of money, so I'm going to get Congress to hold their nose and rubber-stamp this emergency funds request, so we can have peace with honor and all that.

The good news is, you won't have to pay anything for this in extra taxes. We're borrowing it all. Of course, this may lead to inflation and higher interst rates, which in turn may hose the economy even more than it's already hosed, and then I'll look like Gerald Ford in a bad wig–trying to fight stagflation in an election year.

But I'm hoping that you'll forget all about that by November 2004–and if you don't, I have some friends who'll bully you into thinking otherwise. Because dissent is bad for me, and what's bad for me is bad for America. So I'm sure you'll all do the patriotic thing and shut up, pay your reduced income taxes, and not worry while the rest of the national infrastructure goes to hell in a handbasket. Or else.

Thank you, and God Bless America.