n a staunch memo from the White House, written on the president's customized Wild Thornberrys stationary with the head "From the Desk of George II," the president issued a decree confirming the controversy over intelligence errors was at an end.

"Let it ring forth from the Oval Office, loyal Americans," the memo stated, all i's dotted with smiley faces, "that the alleged problem with intelligence has been resolved. We shall not address these topics again under penalty of whatever we can do to you."

The stern warning stems from revelations that Bush used unconfirmed reports of Saddam Hussein attempting to buy uranium in Africa in a Jan. 28 State of the Union address. The report later proved a forgery, and not even a good forgery, forgery critics have reviewed. The misstatement is the first public proof of inaccuracy in Iraq intelligence claims against the president, if you exclude the obvious lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at all. Critics of the president—you know, non-Republicans—were quick to attack the false claim in the wake of recent information.

"Mr. President, for the American people, I ask you, Where are these weapons of mass destruction?" accused Democratic presidential nominee Dennis Kucinich in a fund-raiser only he attended.

White House officials were caught off guard by the public story revealing the inaccuracy of the uranium claim, and pointed to the CIA as the culprit. In their estimation, the CIA is responsible for verifying every statement the president is to say before he says it, or make it true in the aftermath once he has said it. CIA Director George Tenet, as captain of the rotting ship, took full responsibility for the error. According to other CIA insiders, Tenet had previously made White House speechwriters remove an Oct. 7 reference to the same forged documents until it could be verified, but failed to intercede on the president's behalf in January.
The backlash came in a form of public outcry about the legitimacy of intelligence collected by the CIA, and a frustrated Bush responded by saying he retained faith in Tenet, who was responsible for his false declarations, and that American intelligence was in good hands, describing it as "darn good." Political pundits were on the offensive again however, noticing that Bush stopped short of calling the intelligence "the bee's knees" or "rootin' tootin'."

The presidential decree, the first of its kind, was released Saturday, following a failed attempt the week before to urge the nation into silence by calling the matter "closed." The decree, while not a Constitutionally-viable change in public policy and holding no legal ramifications for the disobedient, could be the first in a series of presidential changes in lawmaking to enforce the will of the president over his subjects. Which is how Bush sometimes refers to his constituents.

White House mouthpiece and new meat Scott McClellan defended what some considered a presidential overstepping of duties.

"His will is divine and not for us to question," said McClellan Saturday. "He is merciful and wise. Your opinions to him are like the gnats buzzing around the head of the large and noble wildebeest of the Serengeti plain."

It could be neither confirmed nor denied at press time whether wildebeests roamed the Serengeti.

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It's about time the government dropped the ball, publicly, and proved me right. I told you years ago, in one of my earliest columns, about the top-secret anti-terrorist unit operating out of the Pentagon with free reign to go anywhere and do whatever they want to stop terrorism. The government at last admitted the unit exists, and they're now calling it the "SSB" (or Strategic Support Branch), operating under the direction of the Pentagon's Defensive Intelligence Agency. Their original name, you'll remember me telling you, was the True Badasses.

On Sunday, January 23, the Washington Post broke the mainstream news about the existence of the SSB, while the rest of us who read the commune or report the alternative news just sat back and yawned in a patronizing fashion. Nobody needed to tell me about the super-secret Pentagon anti-terrorism unit—and by nobody, of course, I mean my super-secret embedded Pentagon source, who I'll call Doggie Style. He told me early in 2002, after the unit's creation, that it had begun operating. They were the True Badasses back then, but the scope hasn't changed—they still were developed and hand-picked by Secy. Donald "Rumplestickdick" Rumsfeld, still dressed all in their black ninja outfits, and had the unconstitutional freedom in their mandate to operate any and everywhere they please, if it served counter-terrorism.

How could this happen? Too late to ask now, sir. It would have done us all well if somebody, besides me, had read the Patriot Act. They made it in really small type for a reason, you know. Since no one read it, no one found Clause 631 unusual: "The signing of this Act hereby invalidates all Constitutional guarantees of due process, and promises the creation of a group of elite terrorist-fighters dressed as ninjas and armed to the teeth with amazing ranged and melee weapons, a group herein referred to as 'The True Badasses.'" There it is, in bright red tiny type for us all to have read, and prevented. Damn you, M-TV-generation attention spans.

Nothing to do about it now. Our best bet at this point is to elect some exceedingly liberal leaders (we're talking Dennis Hopper and Karen Finley here) who can sponsor an "anti-Patriot Act Act" that will include the "complete reversal clause" that several of our early amendments cleverly contained. While we're at it, legalizing prostitution wouldn't be bad idea. As Las Vegas and Atlantic City have proven, the worst effects that can happen is having David Cassidy and Andy Williams put on an excessive number of shows in your city. Worth it? I'm not going that far.

That doesn't help us in the meantime, of course. What should you do if the True Badasses, or whatever they're calling themselves now, burst through your window, suspecting you of being a terrorist sleeper cell? Really, this doesn't differ much from the response outlined in my much-maligned self-help pamphlet, "Help! Ninja Attack!"

First, if you are capable of disappearing in explosions of smoke or shadows, by all means, do so. For the rest of us, I'm afraid you're left with stop, drop, and roll—I know this is customarily used to put out fires, but it also works well in Badass, ninja, or bear attacks. Bears run in fright from a clearly insane person, while a True Badass or ninja will often believe you're suffering a seizure, and attempt to put a wallet under your tongue. While they search for their wallet, take advantage of their distraction and wrestle the weapons from their hands. The numbers may be against you, but if you do it fast and well enough, you can at least stage a stand-off likely to last for hours and draw out the FBI and the media. There's nothing ninjas and True Badass terrorist-fighters hate more than public exposure. This will send them back into hiding for sure. Saved again! Now… as for how you can get rid of the media and the FBI, that's a puzzler. If you come up with any ideas, or write your own pamphlet, bounce it my way. I've been working on that one for years.

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Like many of you, I've attempted to mail death threats to various celebrity personalities only to get to the post office and find the desks closed. Without human help, like most of us, I resort to these mechanical stamp-dispensing machines, and like most of us, with only large bills I have to buy stamps with a twenty and what do I get in return? I handful of gold Sacagawea coins. And as is no doubt a common occurrence, I immediately think I've been swindled with Showbiz Pizza Place tokens and trash the entire post office, leading police on a manhunt for several days until things cool down. But it doesn't solve the big question: What's with these dollar coins?

Explaining how and why they get into the vending machines would be a long and arduous process, and I would be stepping on the toes of a Gerald Rivera Fox News special that's currently being developed. Instead, I'll give a quick history of the dollar bill in coin form.

Anyone with piddling knowledge of U.S. history can tell you of the great bout of floods in the west during the late 1800s, and I just have. Early settlers shared the sentiment of our forefathers that dollar coins were a tool of the monarchy for keeping us in line. You could hear rich people coming a mile away by the clang-clang in their pants and that's how the king knew who to grab and shake until all the money came out. Americans, particularly the rich white ones who were making the laws, thought paper dollars were a great way to keep it quiet who had money and who didn't. And just so they could hear the poor coming, everything less than a dollar was made in coin form. Originally all coins were made from gold and really ended up fucking up a good system since a penny cost $3 worth of gold to make when they first started. The freshman American government decided to switch to low-cost metal alloys for coins of various worth before they started to lose their asses.

However, because of the great Western floods, any settlers of the West and tourists would soon find their clothes soaked and their money soiled. The great Western floods brought about a lot of adaptions in American products, particularly the highwater pants I wore in my youth, but we'll save that for future columns and possible therapy sessions. One of the biggest adaptions was the return of the dollar coin.

Originally only available in the west or localized flood areas, the dollar coin became novel because you could bite it and pretend to know a lot about money, even if you were a dipshit. Especially in the west, it was also cooler to throw a coin on the bar and buy a beer for the entire town, even though sometimes the bartender wouldn't know about the existence of dollar coins and assumed you were trying to scam him with a nickel, resulting in frequent ass-beatings and bar-bannings. But the dollar coin maintained what we could call "cult status" in America for a number of years, particularly among a sect of Reverend Moon followers in the 1970s known as the "coinies."

Sacagawea herself, if you're curious, was not a real Native American woman, but based on an Asian girl Franklin Mint founder Ben Franklin was sleeping with. For the design, and name, a group of Franklin Mint pranksters picked an easy Indian girl rumored to have slept with all travelers going west, including Lewis and Clark, and her name was Gawea. "Sack-a-Gawea for me!" was a popular cry among frontiersman of the day and made for a great inside joke for clever people who got it.

In today's paper and plastic economy, dollar coins aren't very practical and can't be doodled on or have phone numbers printed on them, which is all that people use a dollar bill for these days anyway, so the dollar coin is still produced for coin-collecting dweebs and old people who love shiny things. Typically they're so small in number most banks carry few of them, and prefer to deal in paper money since most bankers grew up with a Monopoly obsession, but dollar coins are still around, if you look hard enough, and you come across tons of them if you ever make the mistake of going to the post office with nothing less than a twenty dollar bill.

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