How to Investigate 9-11

 

Like a lot of citizens, I get frustrated because we can’t seem to have a serious investigation of what really happened on September 11. I know it’s not important for me to know, and I realize a full-out investigation would divert critical resources from the War on Terrorism when we haven’t even liberated Syria or punished France yet. But still--I’m just dying to know how Osama’s boys sneaked up and hammered us like that, and I think a lot of other people are, too.

So I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I believe I’ve come up with a way we could have a real investigation after all, without compromising the War on Terrorism. Since national security is at stake—we do still have plenty of big buildings and airplanes, so it’s a good idea to get a handle on this—we could ask our President to have Mr. Ashcroft pull in some of the people he has committed to lower priority missions. For example, there are quite a few agents out in California, cracking down on those state-licensed medical marijuana growers, and several opening cans of whup-ass on assisted-suicide doctors in Oregon. And surely there are others--through much of last year, for example, right in the thick of the War on Terror, there were a dozen or so eavesdropping on a whorehouse in New Orleans. Of course these things are important—but I think we could free up a lot of agents without dropping the ball in any one of these situations.

Just a few dedicated guys could probably hold the fort out west. I’m sure today’s civic-minded media would be happy to help them keep a high profile, so terminal cancer patients wouldn’t get the idea the heat was off and they could skip out on their duly appointed agony with herb therapies or death. Conveniently, California and Oregon are right next to each other, so those agents could just drive back and forth, popping up in California one day and Oregon the next. People would never notice there were fewer of them. . (If it were me, I’d focus on Oregon. Even if the terminal types in California go right back to getting stoned the minute they get a chance, it’s not like they’re going to  recover or anything, so they could always do extra suffering later—perhaps as “enemy combatants,” or something. If they get away  in Oregon, though,  they’re gone.) For whorehouse monitoring, they could just leave the tape recorders running—or get some of those nifty voice-activated ones—so our investigators wouldn’t miss any faked orgasms or bored renditions of “Oh, baby, you’re so big!”

Once they were loose, these lower-level guys could fill in on the anti-terrorist job list—luring convenience-store clerks down to the INS for “registration,” running down hoax-Arabs from Canada, and changing the color display on the Terror Alert Level board—so the guys we really need to talk to could take a break, grab a cup of coffee, and come testify about how in the hell a bunch of foreigners with box cutters turned the most powerful nation in the world on its ear.

Now, I know this will cost money, and there isn’t a lot to be had—because without permanent  tax relief for our movers and shakers right now, America’s economy won’t have what it takes to defeat terror and make a lot of noise about supporting our men and women in uniform. Mr. Bush has already cut way, way back on funding for any investigation, and repeatedly discouraged the existing commission from wasting time and money on documents from the White House, so you know things are tight.

But I have an idea for that, too.

Somewhere around Justice Department headquarters—probably in a sealed plastic bag in Mr. Ashcroft’s desk —there is a blue dress that’s worth sixty-three million dollars! At least, that’s what we paid for it a couple of years ago—and that was with a semen stain on it! We could get the dress dry-cleaned, and auction it off on E-Bay for enough to do eight years’ worth of investigating!

Well, five or six, anyway—the dollar isn’t what it was.