UP THE PRESIDENT'S ASSHOLE

By now, all the comics at all the Improvs all over the world have exhausted their topical "the president got a Colonoscopy, they found his head up his asshole" jokes. It's just too easy. But while his doctors biopsy the polyps looking for any signs of malignancy, compassion, or intelligence, the truth is if they really looked, they would have found something else up there -- the top-secret think tank working on a name for our Iraq exit strategy. That's where the real work is being done. Out here, it's all just for show.

All the "give the surge a chance" posturing is just the White House playing for time, waiting for the marketing guys safely ensconced in the President's small intestine, to come up with a slogan. A little over 30 years ago, we couldn't withdraw from Vietnam until Nixon and company came up with "peace with honor" as a way of justifying another war that shoudn't have been fought in the first place. So, critics, be patient, we'll be out soon enough. And it won't be strongly-worded editorials in The Times, nor biting sarcasm from the Lefty blogs that will make it happen. Because this president is impervious to sarcasm and immune to facts. He safely and happily floats in the womb of the oval office, dining on the placenta of his own ignorance. There's no need to poke him with information, nor prod him with invective. Our exit strategy from Iraq is in the works. At this very moment, deep within the walls of the president's bowels, Karl Rove works round the clock to come up with a slogan that will pacify the nation by cleverly repackaging this villainy as victory, so that we can bring our brave men and women back home with parades and marching bands and waving flags, and we can all come together in that good old-fashioned American "mission accomplished" feeling, secure in the notion that it all just hasn't been a profound waste of money and human life that served no purpose other than turning up the heat and the hate in the Middle East.

So that quizzical look on the President's face while attempting to parry his way through a direct question about the war is not the product of duplicity or evasion. The truth is, he knows we're getting out. He's just waiting for Karl Rove to emerge from his asshole with a marketing hook that will be simple and direct enough for him to wrap his mind around and sell to the American public. My vote: "We Did Our Doody--Let's Go Home."