Folk Singer’s Intercepted Phone Calls Will Reveal Terrorism Threat
It’s time to get rid of Belgium.
You’ve heard of it. It’s a country, located somewhere between Spain and Norway.
Belgium is very insignificant. When was the last time you were driving along and there was a sign that said:
Free Teddy Bear with Every Fillup
How about never? Does never sound right?
You can be rocketing through Europe on a high-speed train and the conductor will get on the public address system. “Attention: You are now entering Belgium.” Just as you are digging out your passport and craning your neck to see a Belgian peasant tilling a field with his oxen, the conductor is back with “Attention: You are now leaving Belgium.”
Belgium is so insignificant that a recent survey of illegal immigrant workers turned up only a single person, a folk singer from Eritrea who sings native songs about loves lost in a bar in a pension. He also sweeps up and washes dishes afterward.
These are all good reasons to get rid of Belgium. But the rock solid evidence that Belgium’s time is short was the United States’ recent decision to sell Belgium a used F-16 jet fighter that the Texas Air National Guard no longer wanted. It was a no strings attached deal that finally gave Belgium its own air force.
Worse yet, it was Vice President Cheney’s office that announced the gift, not the White House. The announcement said that Belgium had been such a staunch ally throughout the War on Terror that the American people wanted to show their appreciation by giving the Belgium air force its own jet fighter. (There was no mention that the cost of flying the F-16 for one hour would equal the entire Belgian annual budget.)
It’s only a matter of time now before someone at the Pentagon leaks to The New York Times or the Washington Post that a Donald Rumsfeld era Belgium National Defense Plan to protect the tiny country from terrorists has been dusted off and is being revised. The revision will call for indefinitely stationing the entire Rhode Island National Guard in Belgium to counter the growing presence of terrorists.
This fear of terrorists will be based on Federal Bureau of Investigation translations of the Eritrean folk singer’s songs performed at the pension. There will also be some phone calls intercepted by the National Security Agency in which the singer called home and exhorted his father to increase his allowance until an expected deal in the United States to record his songs and be interviewed on Fox Television came through.
Yes, it’s time to get rid of Belgium. All we have to do is wait for President Bush to give the word. And Congress, too.
Congress needs to give it’s approval just so there are no constitutional considerations left dangling. But that should be a slam dunk. Congress knows when to do what the White House says and when it’s O.K. to act like an independent body.