December 1, 2005

TIMES HUMOR: BOROWITZ REPORT

British PM Blair talked him down, new report says

A new report published today indicates that President George W. Bush briefly contemplated bombing National Public Radio in the run-up to the Iraq war but was ultimately talked out of it by British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

According to the report, Mr. Blair had just convinced Mr. Bush not to bomb the Arabic-language television network al-Jazeera when the president suddenly shifted gears, turning his sights on the left-leaning NPR.

“Those clowns at NPR have been tearing me a new one, Tony,” the president reportedly said. “Well, that’s nothing a good old daisy cutter wouldn’t fix.”

Mr. Blair reportedly raised strong objections to Mr. Bush’s plan to bomb NPR, after which the president said, “All right already, I’ll just cut their funding instead.”

According to a source quoted in the report, the president had drawn up an elaborate plan that involved bombing several prominent media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Charlie Rose Show.

“The only thing left standing was Fox News,” the source is quoted as saying.

Mr. Bush was eventually talked out of bombing The Washington Post when a top aide reminded him, “If we take out the Post, we won’t have any way to leak things to Bob Woodward.”

As for bombing The New York Times, Mr. Bush ultimately backed down from his plan but suggested launching a smart bomb to take out the Op-Ed page.

Elsewhere, calling it a “rookie mistake,” Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) apologized today for taking to the floor of the House and stridently demanding that Hawaii be named a state.


For more from Andy Borowitz go to www.borowitzreport.com. Andy Borowitz is a nationally syndicated humor columnist whose work can be found in Newsweek and other publications.