- Everyone agrees that President George Bush's lobotomy
has been a tremendous success.
-
- Dick Cheney, the vice-president, declared that he was
fully satisfied with it from his point of view.
-
- "Without the lobotomy," Mr Cheney told the
American Academy of Neurology, "it might have proved difficult to
persuade the president to start wars all around the world without any good
pretext. But the removal of those parts of the brain associated with understanding
the outcome of one's actions has enabled the president to function fully
and without hesitation. Even when it is clear that disaster is around the
corner, as it is currently in Iraq, the chief executive is able to go on
TV and announce that everything is on course and that he has no intention
of changing tactics that have already proved disastrous.
- "I would like to commend the surgeons, nurses and
all involved with the operation," said Mr Cheney.
-
- Similarly, Donald Rumsfeld regards the surgery as an
unqualified success. He writes in this month's American Medical Association
Journal: "The president's prefrontal leucotomy has successfully removed
all neural reflexes resistant to war-profiteering. It is a tribute to the
medical team who undertook this delicate operation that, no matter how
close the connection between those instigating military action and the
companies who benefit from it, the president is able to carry on as if
he were morally in the right."
-
- Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence, is also
delighted at the beneficial effect that medical intervention has had on
the president. "Just imagine how the president might have responded
to Ariel Sharon's crazy schemes if we hadn't had the foresight to take
out the neural pathways normally connected with perception and understanding,"
Mr Wolfowitz told a meeting of the Association of Muslim Neurosurgeons
For An All-Jewish Israel. "The president is now capable of treating
the man responsible for the massacres at Shatila and Sabra as a decent
human being, whose advice on how to deal with the problems of Israel is
worth not only listening to, but also taking."
-
- With all this acclaim for the US president's lobotomy,
it is scarcely surprising that Tony Blair, should have decided to follow
suit and undergo similar psychosurgery.
-
- Thanks to the inhibition of specific presynaptic terminals,
Mr Blair now appears to feel totally comfortable giving his support to
the US massacre in Falluja and to the activities of US snipers who have
been so busy in that city shooting women, children and ambulance drivers
in revenge for the murder of four mercenaries.
-
- It is also believed that intervention in the motor speech
area of his cortex now enables Mr Blair to describe Iraqis who respond
negatively to having their houses blown up as "fanatics, extremists
and terrorists".
-
- Similarly, ablation of the oculomotor nerve means that
Mr Blair is now able to see Israeli plans to retain Jewish settlements
in the West Bank as a big step forward in the Middle East peace process.
-
- What has come as a complete surprise, however, is the
recent revelation that Mr Blair's brain surgery may even predate President
Bush's. For without the removal of large portions of his cerebellum, it
is hard to understand how the British prime minister could have turned
down Mr Bush's no-strings offer to keep British troops out of combat in
Iraq.
-
- Political commentators are thus finding it impossible
to say whether it is Mr Bush or Mr Blair who has pioneered the use of executive
lobotomies in the war against terrorism.
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- Terry Jones is a writer, film director, actor and Python
-
- Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
- http://www.guardian.co.uk
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