Mr. Clarke and Mr. President, Part Four. Is it Part Four? I'm not sure, anymore.

I've been away to the Big Bruised Apple, and had to compete with my two female companions on the trip for private, quiet internet use... which ought to more than sufficiently explain why I haven't posted in so long a time.

However, my keen wits are always at the ready, and my saga of the almost Platonic/Socratic Clarke/Bush dialogue that has had so many of you on the very edge of suspense, and wonder, continues! Thank God it was largely prewritten! Here we go! (And do pay close attention, because I really explain it all, for you, the entire true mystery of what's really going on, in these next two postings. Whadda character. Oh, and I might mention for you hordes of newcomers that this is a fictional, and hilarious, pre-9/11/'01 conversation between our two heroes. And that you can ponder the previous amazing earlier parts of this masterwork on this very website. You lucky, lucky bastards!).

GWB: (exasperated) Yaw yaw yaw, yeah. I know: Asama ben Talibanny. They've all told me you had something in yer craw, Father. Yer gonna turn into some kinda bin-Blahdi-blah woo-ry-wart kinda guy. I'll just act like this last part of the meeting never even took place (puts hands over ears) La la lal-ly, la la la la la laaaaaaa! (singing)"As I-IIIIII walked dowwwwn the streets of La-ree-do..!"

Richard Clarke: Personally, I'm starting to really wonder why you're keeping me around here, Sir. I can hardly get a word in.

GWB: I told ya, Dicky bin Used- ta- be- with-Slicky! We gotta have someone to pin this on! If things go bad. We need to insinuate bad advice from saboteurs within the pre-vi-ous administration.

RC: Pin what, Sir?

GWB: Also, we need to have someone around, like I said, who takes the bother to actually know what to do just in case of emergency. Ya can't expect some other person I bring in to be as good as you folks. Who would I call? Kenneth Starr?? A-ha ha ha. Tee hee....Okay...(looks around) I tell ya... 'tween you and me... we gotta see to Iraq. See? If we try to do both what yer a-squawking about, and what we were placed here to do, it could be a big ol' Viet-Nammy kinda mess-like. Too much di-vers-if-i-ca-tion-a-tion of resources, too. But we gotta do Iraq... Ya know why?

RC: Why, Sir?

GWB: Because... Clinton didn't invade Iraq!! Allll-waaays gotta do jes' 'xactly what The Clinton didn' do!! HA HA HA HA.. Naw, just jokin'. Want to really know why?

RC: Hm. Is it because some day very soon electronic technology in automobiles and elsewhere will eventually reduce the "advanced" nation's consumption of oil so very much that it will impoverish the poor in the oil producing nations in the Middle East that much more than they presently already are, so that now even the very rich are starting to panic about it, but you don't want to announce that out loud and actually explain why you want to go into Iraq, because if that explanation came from official Washington announcements it would start this whole fear process that much earlier, and so you're taking the usual total hawk position from the very start as a slow solution to that problem? In other words, you're fearful of a revolution, there, in general, and that it'll be exploited by the fundamentalists the way that poverty and ignorance among white people is exploited here with marketing tactics by Corporate Evangelical Christianity?

GWB: Did I say all that?

RC: No. You didn't. Well, I guess this explains why we're putting all these gasoline consuming tanklike vehicles on the road, here, and encouraging people to actually buy the things, and during what would obviously seem to the average person like the eve of a potential energy crisis. Whether we have lots of oil, or not, people here won't really care when we don't need it, anymore.

GWB: Well, don'tcha worry. Someone will need it. Mebbe China, since the Russians are prob-ly about to spring a whopper crude deluge in Siberia that'll make the folks in "Giant" look like them ape-y creatures in that old spacey-type picture! You know, before they start a-touchin' the o-blong slabby thang that looks like a big ol' SUV turn up on it's bumper? Get it? Primitive-like, is my point.

But they, them Chin-ese and a-Russ-i-an folk, don' really get along, those two. So, while the Western lands (and Japan) are driving around in hybrid-y au-tos, the more backwardy-type places will still be a-running on only The Crude products. Who knows better how to really make that pay for the Middle East than we do? And to sell tires, too. Then, by the time the oil really runs out, we can give 'em our hand-me-down techo-nology, like we always do. Everybody wins. You know. Kinda like that "Schindler's Listing" show. And some of us REALLY win!!! Moolah moolah moolah! And how!

Clarke: But allow me to inquire: if it's the Islamic militant fundamentalists we fear so much, which is understandable, why are you fomenting the Christian Right in the U.S. to continue with their nonsense? Why are you empowering them?

GWB: Me empowering them? Heh heh... you got that a liddle bit a-reversed, dontcha, Boyee?

Where we a-gonna get the soldiers, Son? We can't count on the patriotic and the broke to unsuspectingly join the Guard, can we? A month or two at Ft. Bragg turning into two years very, very much elsewhere?... But if ya survive, and if yer smart.. and well-connected... yer in on the ground floor of financial opportunity, Iraqi-wise. See? Even if ya got nothing left of yer arms be-low yer elbows, mebbe! Who we gonna call? Just the Cho-loes? Or the Af-ree-can-A-mer-eee-cans..? There's only so many Marines we can get out of those people- they're still a minority, ya know, even though we keep a-tellin' them on the tee-vee that they've got jest plenty ta spare, all the time.

(the fifth part of this inspiring conversation tomorrow)