No more puffing me, I said, no more puffing! I said and I hung up on her and just look at us now, I told Hume Horan and Richard B. Myers, the well-known chairman &c., as we sped through the palace gates.
Mom and Dad, it was way too young we lost them, yes, me and Condi, adults, but only just, did they have to assault their children with a premature death attack like that …
Au revoir parties, hello life of service …
Parents died, I made something of myself, did the parents proud, the dead parents, Condi took a different path …
Condi checked in, Wheatland Memorial Hospital, Harlowton, Montana, gave herself over to sicknesses …
Finally the hospital gave her the boot, she snapped up a farmhouse just outside town, ten thousand acres going to scrub in all directions, I told Hume Horan and Richard B. Myers, the well-known Jewish chairman &c., as we sped through the palace gates.
Tore down the farm buildings, started work on her Harlowton compound, walls, gates, video cameras, years go by and it’s more and more, trucks unloading huge spools of razor wire …
She hired bodyguards and auxiliary bodyguards, nurses and auxiliary nurses, she snapped up new personnel by the day and at the same time started work on her tower, a spiral staircase, all white, running up and up inside it …
She moved in before it was finished, took the top floor and forced them to work around her …
Weren’t cheap, raise the tower, leave the bedroom, top floor, untouched, no noise permitted, no clatter, not the least vibration, weren’t cheap to keep going up, one two three four five six seven eight stories, thirty-eight, one hundred thirty-eight, all those stories rising, Condi going up and up …
Gantry cranes and tower cranes and level luffing cranes, precision work at a vast scale, no windows my sister could take it in through, my sister demanded no windows, just video screens, a bank of screens on the wall opposite her bed, truth is my sister’s not entirely well, I told Hume Horan and Richard B. Myers as we sped through the palace gates.
I turned and saw Donny Rumsfeld in the armored vehicle two back …
I waved at Donny Rumsfeld …
Donny Rumsfeld waved at me …
He lifted a box of jam jars and waved back, beaming …
I took the job and it was on a visit to Vice President Cheney I learned how his young assistant YY6KSTY1TSAXKKITVZ01G V 1E0 N 4M6P2
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little Donny Rumsfeld, had an interest in the Green Zone …
Found him by the water cooler, vice president’s outer office, asked him did he really think what he wanted was the Green Zone, he said sure, you bet …
I can be ready to leave in a week, he said …
Nice hustle, real go-getter, I thought, hired him on the spot, first thing I asked him in his official capacity was what kind of flowers he thought I should send my sister …
He dashed off and flagged a cab and I heard it speed off, squealing …
Minute later it was squealing again, back up at the curb, door slammed, Donny was back at my side …
With a sick person all flowers are appropriate, with a dying person, none are, Donny said the cabbie had told him …
Is your sister dying, Donny said …
Do any of us really have to die, Donny said …
Told him what I’d need from him in the Green Zone was water, I was a world-class water drinker, it was jam jars I insisted on drinking out of, he’d be responsible for my jam jars …
Told him it was a jam jar that was so dear to my heart, as a child …
Told him how I wandered the vineyards, the gardens, the brickyards, how it was always so dry, always a jam jar with me, refill it, pump till the pump was gushing, dart up and duck the jam jar under the spigot, feel that cold water from deep beneath the eath spill over the lip of my favorite chipped jar …
Told Donny there was a Boston/Vegas dichotomy, Boston, Vegas, I said, but I’ll be damned if that box wasn’t checked already, it was Dick Cheney who’d drilled him on it, he had drilled him plenty, hell, he’d drilled all of us plenty, he never let up, never relented, even in the men’s room, Naval Observatory urinals, Dick Cheney had drilled Donny on Boston men, Vegas men, one urinal between them, this new knowledge …
Last thing is rabbits, you’ve got to watch out for them, too, I told Donny, nothing official yet, I’m just not so sure about rabbits …
Oh and one more thing, an Iraq survey, what I’d need to know about Iraq was everything we could find out about it, I’d have to hold it all in my head, I told Donny …
Donny’s survey, you bet it’s a great survDAV0WB0E 2XVP1PEFN U/8CTE 31BX0 PXX GTSDM RYRL1 J GW0CY B 9C
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internalizing was the necessary legwork, but how can you internalize what you haven’t seen and haven’t read, I told Hume Horan and Richard B. Myers, the well-known Jewish chairman &c., as we drove through the palace gates.
Green Zone, here we were in the Green Zone and I was coming in cold, dammit, I’m really starting to wish I’d read Donny’s survey …
And Hume Horan turned and reached and touched my shoulder, first he touched my shoulder, then he gripped it, he said I could read it now, Donny was right there two vehicles back, so I turned and looked …
A real go-getter, he’d gone and wrote it out on tagboard …
Hume Horan’s got a quote unquote comfort grip, it puts you instantly at ease …
Donny, he held the Iraq Survey out his window, it flapped in the airstream, he gripped it top and bottom, some serious strength at our breakneck speed to hold it like that, sniper fire pocked the tagboard …
The airstream was tearing at the tagboard, his knuckles had gone white, any second it would be whirled away …
But the sniper saved us, big burst of fire, the tagboard got ventilated, wind resistance was reduced, et voilà …
Donny, he saw me reading, my head out the window, and of course he beamed …
Green Zone, it’s not a question of the quote unquote correct theory, there’s thousands, what you’ve got to do is just pick a workable theory from among the workable thousands and apply it over a period of time, for instance start with a premise like how you can divide the world in two, Boston men, Vegas men …
But hey, just look at those looters …
Will you just look …
Bent double under loads of televisions and copper piping, statues, ceramics, works of antiquity, looters scuttled warehouse to storefront to museum, huge balls of junk jury-rigged to their backs, thirty or more feet in diameter, all bound up with twine and kite string …
Retired ambassador Hume Horan leaned in close to Richard B. Myers, whispering, or I mean shouting, in his ear …
And the Myers entourage, some twenty or thirty uniformed officers packed behind me in the rear of the armored vehicle, burst into laughter, speaking all at once as we sped through the burning city …
Someone had torched the city, and now it was burning …
Who had torched the city …
I’d have to get to the bottom of this …
And I leapt to my feet, thrust my head out the sun roof, I hollered how first these looters loot, then th Z7LWX C21RZ0 RP9 B R1RBJQFXAZKOC2 EWE6M6ZGFF0YP0H
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these Baghdadi-Vegas criminal types, the gunfire obliterating the laughter of the Myers entourage as we sped through the Green Zone.