Just believe that the lovable Lamont Cranston (George W.) is on top of it all. He has the "power to cloud men's minds" and with that power he can get to the bottom of anything, be it a terrorist threat or hidden weapons of mass destruction. Just give him the chance. Believe in him. Send him your sons and your wallets.

Hey, be thankful he's not asking for your daughters like the last great leader we had. No more not-so-virgin sacrifices on the hill or renting the palace to supplicants with bags of gold. This time, we've got a leader with some integrity, some spunk, and some straightforwardness that is standing tall like a good quick-draw cowboy at high noon. Your latest selection from the Kings Ranch dynasty with much the same band of merry men brought forward by his father before him—big oilmen to the core.

But let's not forget the lesson of mock wars taught us by the last administration. Particularly, the invasion of Haiti where we got everything we wanted without firing a shot. It was certainly better than overrunning Grenada and being chastised by that silly international court for war crimes. All we were doing was protecting hard working and dedicated medical students. It was the invasion where we passed out more medals than World War II. Medals awarded for wiping out unarmed airport construction workers and surviving friendly fire on an island about the size of almost any unincorporated country town or local suburb. Win one for the gipper.

And isn't it interesting that we've again got Caribbean medical students in the news. This time it's three young men, each of them U.S. citizens, who stopped off at Shoney's in Calhoon, Georgia, and made some tasteless remarks on their way to some medical to-do in Miami. CNN tells us that these three were studying medicine in Dominica, an island inhabited almost solely by Arawak Indians. The original dwellers of islands from the Bahamas to Trinidad who have been shuttled to this small island much like the Catholic Church relocates its pedophile priests.

No, this time we've got some serious oil at stake. And the shadow has peered into the heart of Saddam Hussein, the evildoer with a nation of 21 million slaves under his spell, and found that he intends to develop and use weapons of mass destruction against us. As Donald Rumsfeld, our Secretary of Defense, tells us: Weapons of mass destruction are to terrorize others. If they aren't to be used to terrorize, what are they for?

We must, therefore, conduct a preemptive strike against Iraq in order to get rid of this evildoer and install someone of our choosing. After all, the evildoer is just months away from having nuclear capability if he gets the right sort of outside help from Russia, China, North Korea (read China again), Pakistan, India, or Ollie North.

Meanwhile, in his role as Lamont Cranston the community do-gooder (much like Bruce Wayne of Gotham City) the changeling Shadow has passed a new education bill that promises to bring civics lessons back into the nation's classrooms. He tells us this is needed because many of today's youth believe Germany was our ally in the Second World War and have little idea of the principles left us by our founding fathers. Framers of the Constitution who, by the way, would probably be classified "terrorists" today for conducting guerilla warfare against the British with acts like crossing the Delaware in the dead of night in order to wipe out German mercenaries sleeping in their Christmas morning bunks at Trenton. Imagine two eighteenth century British soldiers named George and Richard leaning on their muskets and saying: Did you hear about Trenton? This George Washington is a terrorist.

At any rate, it will be interesting to see if American schools begin teaching the more recent history of Iran and Iraq, particularly how we harbored the ousted Shah of Iran. How the Ayatollah Khomeini claimed the Shah had run off with Iran's treasury. And how we shuttled the Shah off to Lyford Cay in the Bahamas (the islands again) and then Panama where he passed away while we froze Iranian money in our banks.

No doubt, the children of today also don't realize the trouble this caused for President Carter, a man elected to office simply because he wasn't a crook. The history of the embassy hostages held because the Ayatollah said they were spies, the bungled attempts to free them, and the fact that the Ayatollah always said he wouldn't release them until both the Shah and the money were returned. In those days, we had good reason to back Saddam when he attacked Iran.

And this is one of the instances when we know Saddam used biological "weapons of mass destruction" in violation of the Geneva Convention. We know because we were supporting him.

For all we know, some of these nasty and illegal weapons might have come from our own stockpiles in places like Utah where a black clad masked intruder was recently spotted but not caught. Thought to be a terrorist looking to use more of our own technology against us in a period of "orange alert" CNN showed us rows of Serin, Mustard, and other biological gases neatly stacked in shell casings.

The Shadow hasn't said anything about this, but if he did it would be something to the effect that we are the good guys so having weapons of mass destruction at our disposal is alright, we are pure of heart, just ask the Japanese.

Without ever questioning whether the nineteen terrorists who died in a suicidal attack on the World Trade Center and our military headquarters had an axe to grind, or whether that maliciousness might have been directed specifically at the New World Order rather than the American public, we've immediately adopted the Israeli answer to such possibilities. As Benjamin Netanyahu put it at a Hillsdale College seminar in Naples, Florida, on March 19, 2002: "We must harden ourselves against this amoral and debilitating charge." (Full context of speech)

Some in Congress and the Pentagon want to know ahead of time just what our intentions are once we defeat Saddam. His country is composed of warring tribes of Shiites, Kurds, and other tribes that have hitherto been dealt with under a heavy hand. The Russians told us the same thing about Afghanistan and you can witness what's happening there now.

The ability to cloud men's minds.

The name of the game in our capitalist society is money. With money, you can get just about anything you might want including power. Someone once said that if you can control the news in a country, you can do anything you want.

In the interest of cutting this long article short, let's skip over the fact that most of the news outlets in this country are owned by special interests, particularly defense manufacturers, and get to the heart of it. Television has become the big gun with newspapers and radio lagging behind. If you doubt this, you've got your head in the sand. And the Internet, wonderful as it may be, appeals to a small proportion of people who are not using their computers to play games or research sports statistics, at best probably the same percentage of people who voted for Ross Perot in 1992.

If you want to control the media, use it to cloud men's minds, it would take a great deal of money not just for advertising but directly to the stars. Katie Kurrick makes $14 million a year for doing what she does. What do you suppose people like Bill Hammer, Paula Zahn, Wolf Blitzer, Bill O'Neil and others are pulling down? What do you think their staffs are making to keep the monitors flowing with trivia? Do you think that any of these millionaires are going to step on the hand that feeds them, even if they were allowed and even when it's flagrantly obvious like the rip-off of the working stiff's retirement money?

I'm sorry, but you haven't a chance in hell of hearing the truth if it goes seriously against the money. About the best you can expect are small bits and pieces, scraps that the Oligarchy is willing to throw your way, in order to maintain a semblance of freedom of the press and free speech in this country. Exposes about $400 hammers, toilet seats, or other wasteful spending comparable to people complaining about the food in hospitals. Real debate has been gone for a long time and you are living under the most powerful propaganda machine that has ever existed, with a president and cabinet that use it daily. Have you ever seen any other president on television every day? He's selling you something isn't he?