[CH] Rumsfeld warns first strike on Avery Island
maclagan8@bigpond.com
Wed, 30 Apr 2003 20:37:41 +1000
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."