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.

Like every other American Idol fan, I was sorry to see Sanjaya Malakar go from the blockbuster TV talent show last week. I have to believe anybody with that many A's in his name is destined to be a star, so if it doesn't happen here and now, it'll happen some other time, some other place. Maybe in Bollywood. Mad props to Sanjaya for keeping it going as long as he did. All of us brothers with more looks than talent know what it's like to coast on pre-teen chick love.

I'm not a big Simon Cowell fan anyway. Simon and me go way back. I blew away the competition on American Idol back in the second season auditions, but Simon managed to rig everything against me. I didn't even make it to the show because the prick made some argument about the video from the security camera not being "network quality." I did a cover so ass-blasting amazing of "Hot Blooded" that Foreigner took out a court order that forbid me from ever singing it again, 'cause it made them look like chumps. Simon kept me out of the contest by voting against me, because he was the only judge. I don't know where Paula and Randy were, I guess they were probably in their hotel rooms. Security wasn't understanding enough to let me climb up on their balconies and audition for them, 'cause that dick Simon had me thrown out.

I've been destined to be huge star since I was conceived, and I'm not just talking about the porn industry. I'm talking a cross-media star of unstoppable magnetism and Q-rating power, like Jamie Foxx. You remember him, he was famous a couple of years ago. But mine is the kind of fame that is like a big cosmic secret that only I know about—right now. Soon it's going to be busting out of every galactic orifice there is. Guys will go to see my movie because I'll be running around shirtless in it, shooting terrorists, and girls will snuggle me under their arms on the way to school on the cover of their Trapper Keepers. I'll be shirtless there, too. I'm assuming that anti-shirtless Alamo Cruise legislation will be overturned by then.

When I'm super-famous, I'll have to dress the part, and I'm already way ahead on that front. I have an extensive collection of baseball caps and sunglasses. Some I bought even before I did my American Idol audition, just because I liked them. Like my "Mega-Ninja" hat, or the one that says "Hard Cock Inspector"—imagine being a lady and seeing that coming at you. You know it's a police detective and he's got an extra-hard cock for you. But they probably don't let you wear something like that in Scotland Yard because they make you were those stupid Sherlock Holmes hats, but I think Scotland sucks anyway and don't want to go there when I'm famous.

If I get into a fight with the Pavarottis, too, I'll know how to handle myself. A lot of celebrities like to kick Pavarotti ass because they want to keep their pictures from being taken, but I don't care about that. I just want to kick a lot of ass to show I'm from the streets. But after I kick all the Pavarotti ass, I'll let them take pictures of me. I'll even sign their tits, if they want me to. If they aren't girls, I suppose I'll have to sign something else, but that's going to cost them.

Shit. Why didn't Simon just let me go on the show and let the fans choose me? This "getting famous without really doing anything" would have been so much easier. Maybe I can change my name to Alamo Hilton.

º Last Column: Grand Canyon
º more columns