The Conversation II

George: Hey Tony, we need some more diversion.

Tony: For what this time?

George: Same thing, Iraq is still a shit hole, my allies here are dropping like flies.

Tony: Yeah I heard about the Liebermeister going down in flames.

George: You need to organize an “attack”.

Tony: Why me? I did this for you at the G8 in ’05. It’s your turn

George: You forget what I did for you during the ’06 G8. I made you look like a Rhodes Scholar.

Tony: What are you talking about?

George: I looked like an idiot, talking with my mouth full, cussing on camera, inappropriately touching that German woman. By comparison you looked like a real statesman.

Tony: You didn’t do that stuff for me. That was just you being yourself, the frat boy who has yet to grow up.

George: Yeah, well, it still took people’s minds off your problems for a bit.

Tony: You’re right. OK, what do you want me to do this time?

George: I am not sure yet, but it has to be big, real big, but nobody can get hurt. I have too much of that going on in Baghdad.

Tony: So we need to plant some more FUD?

George: Whats that?

Tony: Fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

George: Oh, that’s good, real good. Did you just come up with that? I need to use that in a speech sometime. Do you mind if I use FUD?

Tony: Go ahead, you are already the master at it slinging it around.

George: OK, then. Let’s get a plan going here. How about planes. That has settled down since the double R incident.

Tony: Double R?

George: That Richard Reed thing that we did with the “bomb” in his shoes. I still have these people taking off their shoes at the security checkpoints.

Tony: Still? And they haven’t revolted over this?

George: I am amazed too. These lemmings will put up with pretty much anything that we come up with.

Tony: OK, so if it is a plane it will have to be a bomb. The public will not buy anything involving hijackings. We have that locked down quite nicely.

George: Yeah, but let’s make it a lot of planes. That will make it look real and not something that we cooked up.

Tony: I’ve got it! We claim that a lot of planes had terrorists on them planning to use liquid explosives hidden in their shampoo containers.

George: Oooo, that is good. But won’t they need gallons of that stuff like that McVeigh guy used?

Tony: I don’t know, but what’s better is that the public won’t either.

George: How do they blow that liquid stuff up?

Tony: Beats me. Probably with some kind of electronic gizmo. Nobody understands how that stuff works either so we can say just about anything.

George: Yeah, how do they get all of those CDs on an ipod?

Tony: I will show you the next time I am in town. Anyway this is brilliant!

George: What will be the fallout?

Tony: We’ll raise those meaningless terror alert levels, restrict liquids on planes, and we will look like heroes.

George: You are right this is good, real good. No real downside and we get those approval numbers moving back up.

Tony: I will get to work on this right away.

George: Get you guy to do it.

Tony: I don’t have a guy.

George: I thought Karl took care of that.

Tony: He did but the guy we found had a conscience and could not perform the required duties.

George: OK, I have a ton of these guys working for me. I will send one over.

Tony: OK.