An article by Bob Woodward that ran in the Seattle P-I on June 16 reported that George Bush had signed a secret directive to topple Sadaam Hussein.

One interesting assertion was that US special forces teams would be allowed to "kill Sadaam if they were acting in self defense."

I imagine that scenario would start out with the commandos gliding onto the roof of Sadaam's palace in the middle of the night, using special commando gliders. Blowing a hole in the roof, they rappel down into Sadaam's bedroom. The groggy dictator reaches into his nightstand for his pistol and is shot dead, "in self defense." In some jurisdictions he wouldn't even have to be reaching for a gun, a TV remote or wallet would do.

There are a few other items in the current war on terrorism that you may have missed, what with all the brouhaha over finding the terrorists who unleashed last fall's anthrax attacks. Terrorists who remain at large are presumably US citizens, still on US soil and still, presumably, with continued access to sophisticated bio-agents and presumably with continuing motive to unleash their next attack at any time.

With legitimate terrorist hunts like this taking up all of our and John Ashcroft's attention and energy, it's no wonder that some other elements of the war to end all have escaped much public scrutiny.

Hoping to bolster their case for killing more Iraqis out of spite for their dictator Sadaam Hussein, the Bush administration is said to be close to issuing a report that Sadaam and Osama bin Laden have undergone a Vulcan Mind Meld and they are now each twice as dangerous and twice as evil.

Following up on their success at foisting off made-up legal appellations such as "unlawful combatant," and "enemy combatant," the executive branch is hard at work honing other convenient terminology. Some of those that have survived preliminary discussion include, The INS's proposal for a Somali grocery combatant status while the Pentagon favors pre-combatant, and surrogate combatant as useful terms in its explanation of what would otherwise be called civilian casualties. They would also like to include: would have grown up to be a combatant and would have given birth to a combatant. George Bush likes just plain evil combatant while the FBI wants to hold people incommunicado that it determines to be memo-writing, congress-testifying field agent combatants.

The administration is also studying a proposal by John Ashcroft to arrest people by zip code until cleared by expedited mini-tribunals.

The Department of Homeland Security, finding its hands tied by lack of cabinet status and CIA/FBI cooperation, has devoted its time mainly to rewriting the Pledge of Allegiance. This highly confidential effort came to light after a crumpled draft was retrieved from Tom Ridge's wastebasket by the FBI. (You wondered what they've been doing all this time!) While en route to the lab for analysis, a photocopy of the draft pledge inadvertently ended up on the back of a search warrant served by the Bureau on a teenage website operator in California. The Webmaster, against whom charges were never brought, was unable to post this item himself, as the FBI apparently shipped his hard drive to Pakistani Intelligence by mistake. He has, however, sent a copy along via snail mail.

The new parts are in italics.

The Pledge of Homeland Allegiance by Thomas Ridge, Homeland Security Czar

I pledge absolute allegiance to the flag of the United States of America the greatest nation on earth and to the sole superpower for which it stands One nation under god and under yellow* threat alert Immaculately conceived and invincible with safety and security for all who are on our side

(* This part of the Pledge will be changed to reflect the current threat assessment as a convenient way of keeping the Pledge-reciting public apprised of our current status.)

Not to be outdone, John Ashcroft and William Bennett have teamed up to rewrite the Bible. It's unknown what progress they have made since, if the CIA has been able to steal a draft, they are sharing it only with a select group of Afghan warlords and Vladimir Putin.