Former CIA Director Doesn’t Know Sports

h, baby, there’s being a girl and then there’s being a girl—know what I’m saying? Take as an example former CIA Director George Tenet, the man who complains in his new book At the Center of the Storm that he became a poster boy for the fuck-up in Iraq and that his comment "It’s a Slam Dunk, Mr. President," was used as grounds for the Iraqi invasion and taken out of context. Now it turns out that, according to Tenet’s new book, the problem is trying to use sports terminology in the workplace without knowing shit about sports.

Like a lot of women out there, this reporter only watches sports for the unspoken erotic tension between the players and the frequent male touching. But honey, at least I watch. Which leaves straight boys like George Tenet trying to fumble (another sports term) around the office to describe international situations in a language the president can understand. If he don’t know sports and the president don’t know international politics, they might as well be speaking Swahili and German to each other, sweetie.

In Tenet’s new book, the freshest alibi that testifies he’s someone else who didn’t do shit to cause the unpopular war in Iraq, the former CIA Director tells how he responded to the president’s question about the intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD is so 2003 now), to which Tenet replied with the damned expression "Slam Dunk." But Tenet says the case against him is not so clear.

"The president likes to receive all of his briefings in language that the public can understand," Tenet wrote of his former boss and frequent sly critic. "This makes it easier for the razor-sharp mind of President Bush to prepare information for his press conferences—with so many things on his plate like writing a balanced budget, researching the privatization of health care, and his late-night situation meetings, sports terminology can get the point home to the American people without the president complicating the matter with the convoluted jargon familiar to President Bush, but strange to our ears.

"In this matter, I incorrectly clarified the intelligence case for Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction as a ’Slam Dunk.’ I have very rarely ever seen a football game, so using this terminology was my mistake. I should have gone with ’home run,’ which is at least familiar to me because of dating slang. I did not mean that the ball was knocked out of the park. I meant that that thing happens where—what’s the term for when a player pretends to throw the ball, but you’re not sure he did, and any player could have or not have the ball? A ’clusterfuck,’ maybe? Whatever that thing is, that’s what I meant to say. Boy, I must have really messed up my sports lingo, though."

Tenet’s book further criticizes politicians out there, including the White House, for making him the scapegoat for the war because of the "Slam Dunk" comment. When the intelligence for Iraq was revealed as faulty, detractors pointed to Tenet as the face for the flawed intelligence system and put the burden on him and his people for a war that many accusers say was initiated only by the president’s interests. Tenet goes on to describe the process as "just plain mean."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was uncharacteristically frank in her response to Tenet’s charges in her response with Wolf Blitzer on CNN Sunday.

"George screwed the pooch and he knows it," said Rice. "That’s not a sports term, so maybe I won’t have to translate it for him. We should send him to the penalty box for his knocking us over it all, but he wouldn’t know where the fuck it is anyway."

irginia Tech officials revealed Monday that last week’s on-campus massacre, which resulted in 33 deaths and countless injuries, may have been related to a cultural exchange the university was participating in with the Iraqi city of Baghdad.

“We thought it might be enlightening for students to experience a day in the life of an average Iraqi,� explained University President Charles W. Steger. “To feel the effects of U.S. foreign policy firsthand. But let me be very clear when I explain that we had no idea the exchange would be so literal. And none of us can even begin to understand how this was possible. That old gypsy woman was very vague about the details.�

The particulars of the exchange are sketchy, but field reports indicate that Baghdad residents spent Monday attending beer-bong blowouts and date raping drunken sorority girls to the sounds of Dave Matthews Band. Va. Tech students arguably got the shittier end of the deal, spending the day coping with the kinds of heartbreaking carnage and mayhem normally reserved for everyone living in Iraq.

“Bah,� dismissed Iraqi horse gelder Jassim al-Ogedi. “Thirty-three dead? That is a good day in Baghdad. After the Americans opened the Pandora’s Box of pure, unfiltered living hell in Iraq, we thank Allah for every day that the death toll stays in the double digits.�

Iraqi insurgents were also displeased with the exchange and the resultant American media frenzy, which they could never hope to inspire even by killing every man, woman and child in the entire nation of Iraq.

“Hey! Assholes! We just blew up a children’s hospital! What do you guys need, a videotaped manifesto?� griped an insurgent whose given name translates as “Abdul with the Yellow Dog,� we think. “Christ! We kill more people than that by lunchtime, and where are we? Page seven? Four years of this shit and we still have fewer inches of newsprint than Don Imus. Fuck you guys.�

In response, Iraqi insurgents have set to work on a menacing, 30-story-tall killbot, which runs on the blood of the innocent, shoots dazzling fireworks, plays MP3s and comes preloaded with Madonna’s latest album. So far this development has only been reported in the U.S. magazine Popular Mechanics.

Few can offer non-humorous theories as to how the Va. Tech shooter fits into the U.S./Iraqi cultural exchange, however. The gunman, whom the commune refuses to name out of a desire not to make the cockknocker any more undeservedly famous than he already is, plus he’s got some bullshit ching chong name so we could just make something up and you’d never know any different, was not known to have any gypsy ties or to have been politically aware beyond what he had seen on South Park.

Some have gone so far as to argue that the shootings were a coincidence, based on the fact that no one has been able to connect the massacre specifically to the ineptitude of the Bush administration. Time, however, may return a different verdict.

Once again we are celebrating the best kind of weekend, good people—a 4-day weekend. Is there anything better in the great scheme of things than having to work one day less than usual. Of course. There's the 4-day weekend. Praise be to whatever genius created this thing, having only three days of actual work at my job before another, if somewhat disappointingly short weekend, comes around. And there's always that one week when the commune was shut down for Red Bagel's circumcision—that was a sort of gloomy vacation, but the kid survived and our fearless editor was cleared of all charges. Still, I have an idea that will blows your socks all the way up to your hands so you look like a lazy puppeteer: The 368-day weekend.

Are you aware that 2007 ends on a Monday? Good people, this gives us an amazing opportunity to demonstrate that America still knows how to have fun. Let us take that weekend before the last Monday in 2007 and start the longest weekend the world has ever seen. A 368-day weekend! I'm not joking, I wouldn't even know how to joke about something like that, I take my weekends far too seriously. Do you know how many barbecues you could have in 368 days? How many exhibitions of dangerous fireworks? How many days you could mow the lawn, shirtless, enticing the female neighbors? Just think about all the nights you could stay up researching bus tickets to Albany until 3 in the morning, carefree about the stack of work waiting for you on your desk back at that miserable office?

Believe me, I love my job. If it wasn't for my job, I would feel I lacked definition, and had no purpose in the world. It's doing whatever it is I do that makes me who I am. Still, that aside, it's a soul-sucking, worthless, abysmal darkness having to work day-in, day-out. It saps the very will to live out of me thinking of the things I love in my life and how I can't do any of them because I have to spend 40 hours a week performing some bullshit function to keep our crass commercial society steaming along, crushing the innocent under its tracks. So nothing perks me up like a long weekend! And a 368-day weekend would be the longest ever.

Imagine: You leave from work on the evening of December 29, 2007 (and it's been a wonderfully short Christmas week anyway) and you return on Thursday, January 1, 2009. Wait—coming back to work on New Year's Day? I don't think so! By necessity, this plan has to be a 369-day weekend! Good Snapple, this plan keeps getting better by the minute! 369 days it is.

I'm not blind to the practical difficulties of such a plan. I'm well aware that if the banks don't function in 2008, if the farmers don't grow food and the grocers don't stock it, if the power company just shuts down for the entire year, it might cause a less-than-enjoyable weekend. I say bullocks! Which is British for bullshit. Whenever I have a long weekend I can just do a few columns ahead of time, or play catch up when I get back. Why don't we do that? Everybody stock up all the food you can in December 2007, and buy a lot of batteries and gasoline generators. I have a laptop with a battery, so I should still be able to get on the computer. But who wants to? It's a weekend! This prettyboy's not working for the weekend.

Forget the dreary drag of the office, let go of that boring drive to work every day— we can hold the presidential election in 2009. The president can't do the country any more damage if we're all at home watching The A-Team on TV Land. All I'm saying is think about it, Americans. I just might go ahead and take the "long weekend" myself if no one else wants to do it. Feel free to stop by the regal Finger estate to see my wife, Ginger, sunning in the deck chairs and good ol' Rok himself mowing the lawn. Check out my pecs.

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