ollowing former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay's admission pre-war intelligence was practically "all wrong," officials in the Bush administration came forward with announcements everyone was, ostensibly, "shocked."

Staff members ranking as high as the vice president and "president" issued statements on how "shocked" (quote-unquote) everyone in government was about the lack of chemical or biological weapons in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Press secretary Scott McClellan said the president himself sort of "dismayed" and "curious" about the "failure" of prewar intelligence. When asked by reporters if the White House planned a probe into the intelligence problem, McClellan restrained a smile and promised someone would get on that "right away."

Conservative news agencies posed questions to McClellan on how the president viewed intelligence and homeland security in the wake of the discovery, while more liberal news agencies questioned the press secretary on the legitimacy of the Iraq war if intelligence has proven faulty. Meanwhile, in the back of the room, one man screamed at the top of the lungs that the president knew, of course he knew, goddammit, everyone in the administration had to have known and they rode into the fucking White House looking for the first excuse to head into Iraq with guns blazing just like daddy did, Jesus Christ, has everyone else on the fucking planet gone so deaf and blind they can't even see the president's a lousy fucking liar? But McClellan did not take questions at that time.

Statements from the White House were seen by many as damage control after Kay's Wednesday admission to a congressional committee early Iraq intelligence claiming Saddam Hussein was developing a program of weapons of mass destruction (or WMD, as the kids are saying) was incorrect. Kay described the "lapse" as a massive intelligence failure, and painted the president as much a victim of the fuck-up as the hundreds of Iraqis lying dead under rubble and blown up by landmines.

"Boy, did we screw the pooch on this one," laughed Kay, to an unforgiving congressional audience. "Yikes. Tough room. But seriously, folks, you know who we should give it up for? Mr. Bush. That's right, the president. I know it's not popular to say so, but I think he's doing a bang-up job and plainly he just wanted to do the right thing and had no idea how shitty this intelligence was. Really, we're talking Pig Latin intelligence or something. Waaaay off, no kidding. I think they were even in Iceland—hey! You gotta give me that one. C'mon. Show the love."

Friday Bush followed the administration's campaign for getting over this as quick as possible by releasing an official statement ripe with quotation marks.

"Obviously we would have done things 'differently' if the intelligence had been more accurate. Assuming that it was accurate—I still say, really, there's no way of telling if anybody's got weapons of mass destruction on them or not. You can hide them anywhere. I've got mustard gas, hidden in a tree house from when I was 12 years old, little gift from dad, nobody ever found it. You telling me Saddam can't hide something in all of Iraq? But I'm getting off message here. We're obviously facing a 'failure' of intelligence here. Everybody here in this administration wants 'peace,' no one more so than me. But if I had it all to do over again, knowing the 'threat' Saddam Hussein poses to the world, I would have done things very much the same. Our 'coalition' in Iraq is 'ready' to 'hand over' the 'country' in the 'next few months,' give or take two or three years."

ook County Circuit Judge Vincent Gaughan granted alleged musician R. Kelly permission to attend this month’s Grammy awards in a decision handed down this week, on the condition that Kelly avoid all contact with fellow age-of-consent-impaired hit factory Michael Jackson during the ceremony. Though unexpected, legal experts are applauding the judge’s decision as a deft move likely to quell public fears that the two might swap child-molesting secrets backstage at the awards ceremony.

Kelly, nominated for two Grammies for his double-platinum album that’s actually titled “Chocolate Factory,� is awaiting trial on child pornography charges stemming from a 2002 video that allegedly shows the R&B singer engaging in sexual acts with a 14-year-old girl. A spokesperson from Kelly’s record label was unable to confirm if the video in question was for a cut off Kelly’s new album, or if it was one of several previous music videos showing the singer engaging in sexual acts with 14-year-old girls.

While many have applauded Judge Gaughan’s move, some have called it unnecessary considering that Jackson isn’t nominated for any Grammies this year and will likely only show his face if he can sneak it through the bomb-detecting machines at event security. Gaughan, however, defends the efforts to prevent his own personal vision of hell from coming true.

“Because I feel that it’s in the best public interest for Mr. Kelly to be able to attend this ceremony, I won’t deprive the world of the soulful beats and funky grooves of his child-fucking music,� explained Gaughan. “From ‘Freak You Weekly’ to ‘Stained Retainer,’ Kelly has long captured the essence of lusting after the unattainable, not-quite-ripe fruit. However, there’s something very wrong about imagining Kelly hanging out with a ripe fruit like Michael Jackson, and I won’t have that on my watch. Especially after I’ve just eaten. Likely or not, America can’t afford to see the two of them together at the Grammies, the Oscars, or even at a Yankees game this summer. And God forbid I see pictures of those two parasailing in Cancun on some kind of child molester double-date vacation at some point in the future. Yuck-o-rama.�

Scandal first found Kelly in 1994, when he produced Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number, the debut album of 15-year-old R&B sensation Aaliyah, which featured a joke title that would only become funny years later. That same year Kelly and Aaliyah secretly wed, then hastily annulled after Aaliyah’s parents Naaaomben and Shizbitch Haughton forbade Kelly from getting his statutory freak on with their high-school student daughter while they were home.

Apparently emboldened by his brush with infamy, Kelly got his lawsuit on dozens of times during the second half of the decade, settling out of court on charges of allegedly impregnating a 16-year-old, coercing a 15-year-old into participating in an underage girl orgy, and abusing his responsibilities as a Girl Scout troop leader. No sooner were these suits settled than dozens more 14-year-old girls came out of the woodwork, including a Chicago-area 9th-grade health class that claimed Kelly had impersonated their teacher and sexed up the entire class one afternoon in 1996.

Despite the numerous allegations, Kelly’s career showed no ill effects, with the singer scoring two number one hits in 1999 with “Shit, This is Gettin’ Expensive� and “Girl You’re a Woman to Me.�

However in February 2002, elephant shit hit the fan when the Chicago Sun-Times reported it had found a videotape showing Kelly having sex with a 14-year-old girl, and copies of the tape in question were quickly sold as bootlegs and on the Internet. Despite the claims of authenticity in the Sun-Times promotional materials, there was some initial public question as to whether the man on the tape was really Kelly, whether the girl really was underage, and whether the action was truly “all-anal� or merely the product of deceptive camera angles. Police later confirmed the authenticity of the tape after investigating the Sun-Times’ exorbitant shipping charges.

Singer Jackson recently pleaded innocent to seven counts of performing lewd or lascivious acts on a child under 14 and two counts of administering an intoxicating agent, then went on some weird rant about how he calls wine “Jesus Juice� and kids should be able to drink juice.

You say I ruined your life, whatever.

Who gets machine-gunned to death these days, anyway? I mean, seriously. The chances have got to be astronomical. You practically have to be begging to be machine-gunned to death. My cousin was on the waiting list to get machine-gunned to death for three years when he was hit by a train. I'm serious! The way I see it, you should be writing me a thank-you note. I'd call you an inconsiderate prick if I wasn't certain you'd take it the wrong way.

Ruined your life, ha. That's rich. I'll have to remember that to tell my ex-wife, she'll get a real kick out of that one. She loves jokes like that, about me ruining her life or sucking out her will to live, all those old chestnuts. She has this great new one about me chewing up the best years of her life and spitting them out like tobacco juice, it goes over really well at parties.

Because really, how do you ruin somebody's life? Seriously. I can't even fathom it. A priceless Faberge egg, now that's something you can ruin. You can't play catch with one of those things without ruining it completely, trust me on that one. Friendships? Yeah, I suppose you can ruin a friendship. Especially if it's with a stuffy Faberge egg collector who doesn't keep his house locked securely at night. Those are both ruinable, I'll admit. But an entire life? Keep dreaming.

So what, so you have to get all your sustenance by licking pulp off the filter screen from a juicer now. Who doesn't? I'm serious, my grandpa lived off juicer pulp for years, and I didn't hear him complaining. Sure, after the kangaroo ripped out his voice box he had to talk by tapping out Morse code on a pair of spoons, but if he'd really wanted to complain I'm sure he'd have found the time. If he'd wanted to, grandpa could have sat around all day, bitching about how I took him to Australia and told him all the kangaroos were so tame you could get them to eat chewed-up peaches right out of your mouth. But did he? No way! Not after I took away his spoons. Who can sleep with that rat-a-tat-tat going on all night? Jesus. He acted like any of us actually bothered to learn Morse code.

You kind of remind me of my grandpa, actually. That fuckin' guy would believe anything. Well, I'm not sure he'd believe a tall tale like "Go on, stick your hand in there. It's not like they'd keep a loaded machine gun laying around!" but he wasn't an idiot. He was just old and feeble of mind. He didn't run around, sticking his fingers inside the gears of a loaded machine gun on a fool's dare, just because the fool had talked him into sneaking onto a military base in the middle of the night. But then again, grandpa always did hold his liquor better than some people who I won't mention by name.

(You.)

So come on, let's drop this tired old argument. Any reasonable person knows you can't really ruin a life unless it's two thirds of the way there already. Yeah, then maybe you can give it a nudge down the crapper, but hey, that's life. The important thing to acknowledge is that we're both a little to blame. Sure, I may have pulled the trigger, but whose idea was it to ignore me when I was yelling "Dodge! Dodge!" like a good friend? Sure wasn't mine. Granted, you might not have thought it was funny when I was shooting the machine gun down at your feet and yelling "Dance, motherfucker!" but I sure did, so that's really your word against mine when you think about it. And hell, if your fingers hadn't been caught in the gears I don't think most of those bullets would have even hit you, if you insist on calling a spade a spade.

I swear, when those doctors brought you back to life sometimes I think you left your sense of humor on the other side. Let me know if they ever sift it out of that sack of unidentified gristle that was left over after the operation. Otherwise, I don't even know why we're talking.

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