[CH] War On Louisiana
Rob Solarion (solarion@1starnet.com)
Thu, 1 May 2003 14:07:23 -0500
>Not sure where this came from..
>
>> Subject: War on Louisiana
>>
>> In a speech that surprised even such high-level Republican
>> confidantes as Bill Frist, Tom Delay and Britt Hume, U.S. Secretary
>> of Defense Donald Rumsfeld today called on Congress to allow
>> President Bush to proceed with plans for military action against the
>> state of Louisiana.
>>
>> "We do not have the luxury of time to debate our strategy," Rumsfeld
>> told a group that included members of the Senate and House Armed
>> Services Committees, leaders of both houses of Congress, and selected
>> members of the news media. "Louisiana has demonstrated, time and time
>> again, that it is not interested in peaceful coexistence with the
>> United States," the Secretary claimed. "The leadership there says one
>> thing and
>> does another. They tell the world that they have no desire to be
>> aggressive, yet we have proof beyond a doubt that they are producing
>> weapons of mass destruction, and that they would use them against us,
>> especially if they had too much to drink."
>>
>> "Louisianians are like that," he added.
>>
>> When asked what types of weapons of mass destruction Louisiana had,
>> Rumsfeld turned the podium over to Secretary of State Colin Powell,
>> who produced a series of line drawings of Tabasco Sauce bottles and
>> containers of cayenne pepper.
>>
>> "They have capsaicin," said Powell. "And frankly, "we have never
>> before seen chemical weapons of this intensity. Each small bottle of
>> Tabasco sauce contains 720 drops. A teaspoon of the stuff has 60
>> drops. Two to
>> three drops of capsaicin at these levels can disable someone, and
>> five to six drops can cause choking, heart palpitations, respiratory
>> decompensation, and even death. Four drops if the person is from
>> Minnesota."
>>
>> Powell went on to describe Scoville units, the units by which pepper
>> heat is measured, and said that the deadly chemical was produced in a
>> remote part of Louisiana known as Avery Island.
>>
>> According to the dossier from which Powell read, when all four
>> production lines of the Avery Island factory are in operation, over
>> 450,000 bottles of Tabasco can be produced in a single day. "That is
>> enough to kill every man, woman and child in the free world many
>> times over," he said.
>>
>> Secretary Rumsfeld then returned to the podium and fielded questions
>> about his new military directive, which he called a necessary assault
>> on what President Bush is referring to as the Axis of Carville. "The
>> President believes, and I agree with him, that no one in America is
>> safe until Louisiana is disarmed," Rumsfeld announced.
>>
>> When asked about the possibility of sending UN weapons inspectors to
>> Louisiana, Rumsfeld became impatient: "There you go again, with the
>> inspection song and dance. Don't you think that hasn't been tried?
>> Every
>> inspector that was ever sent there wound up in New Orleans, and came
>> back drunk and weighing an extra ten pounds. If you knew anything at
>> all about Louisiana, you wouldn't be asking such an inane question."
>>
>> Asked about the possibility of allowing Louisiana time to disarm on
>> its own, Rumsfeld said intelligence reports showed that if left to
>> their own devices, the state's leaders would eventually distribute
>> capsaicin
>> throughout every major city in the United States. There are already
>> more than a thousand Popeye's Fried Chicken franchises in the
>> country, he said, and there are many other ways to introduce
>> capsaicin to the
>> population.
>>
>> "But what about Governor Foster?" a reporter asked. "Isn't he a
>> Republican?" Rumsfeld smiled.
>>
>> "We're really not sure anymore, after the November election," he said
>> "and anyway, his term will be up soon. And if you don't think Mary
>> Landrieu knows about the Tabasco plant, you are more naive than even I
>> could imagine."
>>
>> Later, at a briefing on the latest addition to the growing list of
>> places the United States will attack, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer
>> was asked if President Bush had visited Louisiana. Fleischer replied,
>> "He thinks he may have been there when he was governor of Texas, but
>> he isn't sure when. I think right now it's somewhat murky."
>>
>> "Louisiana has a lot of oil, Ari," Helen Thomas asserted. My
>> understanding is that it has 18 petroleum refineries, 27,250
>> producing wells, and is home to two of our four strategic oil
>> reserves. Do you
>> want us to believe that the proposed attack on Louisiana isn't part
>> of the White House's plan to confiscate oil on a world-wide basis?"
>>
>> "Helen, it's certainly true that Louisiana has a crude oil reserve of
>> 529 million barrels of oil, but the president has no interest in that.
>>
>> What he does have an interest in is the security of the American
>> people, and that security cannot be maintained unless Louisiana is
>> disarmed of its stash of chemical weapons."
>>
>> With that remark, Fleischer ended the news conference. Later,
>> however, reporters had a chance to talk with President Bush, who
>> invited some of them to the golf course. Asked if he thought an
>> attack on Louisiana
>> would be hard to sell to the American people, the president replied
>> that American citizens were becoming more and more suspicious of the
>> motives of foreign countries, and that they would not hesitate to do
>> whatever
>> was necessary to protect national security.
>>
>> When told that Louisiana was one of the fifty states, Bush nodded and
>> said "God bless America." Asked about allegations that the White
>> House wanted to attack Louisiana for its oil, Bush turned and faced
>> the group.
>>
>> "I can assure you," he said, "I know all about the allegations. They
>> are crawling around all the swamps in Louisiana. Some of them are >
>> ten feet long. Make no mistake: we will hunt them down, and we will
>> bring
>> them to justice."
>>
>>
>
>B. "etouffee" Huerta