Have You Heard the Good News About Iraq?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture demands its employees make sure they hype how great things are going in Iraq in every speech. The Washington Post's Al Kamen mocks them for it. An excerpt:

Let's say you're talking about U.S. agricultural productivity. Try this: "I'd like to take a moment to talk about a nation that is just now beginning to rebuild its own agricultural production.

"Iraq is part to the 'fertile crescent' of Mesopotamia," the sample script says. "It is there, in around 8,500 to 8,000 B.C., that mankind first domesticated wheat, there that agriculture was born. In recent years, however, the birthplace of farming has been in trouble."

Probably want to pause here and give the audience a chance to catch its breath.

The D.C. Agriculture boys could emulate SCTV's old "Farm Film Report" fellows, Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok, and report that at the very least, things in Iraq are "blowing up real good."

Comments

[SR]

OK, now reality has outright lapped "The Onion".

[Jim Henley]

Brian must really want Peter Pan to die.

[Timothy]

Why do we have a Department of Agriculture again?

[Jersey McJones]

There's be lots of good news coming out of Iraq if the reporters didn't get murdered every time they set foot out of the Green Zone...

Sheez...

JMJ

[SK]

Of course it's the logical department to talk about it.. you can't spell "Agriculture" without "Irac"!

[Another Lurker]

Iraq is still the "fertile crescent". The "fertile crescent" of clusterfucks it seems.

[Jim Henley]

"We're planting seeds over there so we don't have to plant them here!"

[joe]

"...Now, this well-tended, body-free field is actually in Turkey, but trust me, there's a lot of them in Iraq as well."

[James Anderson Merritt]

Why refer to that Canadian product, SCTV? Don't we have enough domestic humor to fill the bill? Do we now need to import it? The damned Canadians are all over our TV here! They're practically in charge of "American" media culture! I say enough! We need a law to guarantee US content, or risk losing our national soul!

[John DeWitt]

The damned Canadians are all over our TV here! They're practically in charge of "American" media culture! I say enough!

We could punish them by having some government department say nice things about agriculture in Quebec, or something...

[mk]

"It is there, in around 8,500 to 8,000 B.C., that mankind first domesticated wheat

Things have been going downhill ever since.

[Karen]

The Bush administration is going to put The Onion out of business. The professional humorists just can't make up stuff this bizarre. Now, when can we expect briefings from the Deparment of the Interior about how well things are progressing near Fallujah?

[s.m. koppelman]

So that's what happened to all those Soviet propagandists after Gorbachev stepped down.

[the other Mark]

8,500 to 8,000 B.C.

Impossible. We know that the universe was created on October 23, 4004 B.C.

[Anonymous Coward]

Impossible. We know that the universe was created on October 23, 4004 B.C.

the other Mark stole my comment. Given this mismatch in historical timelines, we need a Blue Ribbon Commision. How can we trust an administration that can't keep the departments of Agriculture and Education in line?

[zardoz]

Is the Department of Education doing this as well? Using a discussion of gang violence in urban schools to segue into a comparison of Iraqi gang violence?

[Shem]

Is the Department of Education doing this as well? Using a discussion of gang violence in urban schools to segue into a comparison of Iraqi gang violence?

Not yet, although some of our homegrown commenters have been known to remark that Iraq can't possibly be worse than some Mexican border towns.