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US admits defeat in war on semantics (The Glass House 10/8/05)

Well whaddya know. The US has decided that the War On Terror is now to be called The Struggle Against Violent Extremism.

Some new slogans in place of the outmoded “War on Terror”:
– The Wrestle With Nastiness
– International Debombification
– War on P.R. Disasters
– War on Iraq/Muslims/Arabs
– Anti-Allah Alliance
– The Terror Tussle
– The Osama Factor
– X-treme X-tremism!
– Global Monopoly
– Life-size Monopoly
– Project Global Empire
– Project Oil Syphon
– Operation Essential Oil
– Operation Concede Defeat
– The Great Debate
– Maybe the UN aren’t so bad after all
– Please Don’t Blow Us Up
– Enough already, you win
– Campaign Johnson & Johnson: No more fears
– If you blow up civilians, you’re a bloody idiot
– The catchy “Don’t wipe out lives… or wipe out lives”
– Muslim extremists have gone completely mad!
– The far more accurate “War Of Terror” (OR: War for Terror / War Using Terror)

The Bush Administration has turned down the slogans “The Endless Horror”, “Hell on Earth”, and “We’re All Going To Die”. A spokesman said “Research showed that they were sometimes misconstrued as negative.”

The terrorists are happy. “Now we’re ‘Freedom Fighters’ again! It’s great!”

They’re also renaming the “War on Iraq” as the “Baghdad Disagreement”, and Guantanamo Bay’s “Camp X-Ray” will be known as “Camp X-Box” when the sponsorship deal comes through. All tortures will then be done by video game; it gives the guards a chance to practise their Mortal Kombat death-moves.

The renaming is effectively a declaration that the War on Terrorism is over. “Thank the Good Lord,” said Bush. “At last we don’t have to worry about people asking us if the terrorists have won.”

“Did you win the war?” “Well… we phased it out…”

“If only all wars could be phased out instead of having to be won or lost – we’d save a lot of lives…”

Now that it’s not a war, they’ve stopped using soldiers. ‘Operation: Sympathy’ will see stealth bombers flying over Iraq and Afghanistan, opening their bomb-hatches, and dropping load after load of highly-trained counsellors over the warzone…

From now on the WTC disasters will be known as “that spot of mischief”, the mass slaying of Iraqi civilians will be called “population downsizing”, and beheaded US soldiers will be known as “the guys who don’t need hats”.

Revising the history books: WW1 is now called “The Really Great War”, WW2 is known as “The Super-Dooper Ace Fun War!”, and the Vietnam conflict is now called the “Happy Lucky Oriental Adventure”.

“Invasion of Iraq” now known as the “Liberation of Hawaii”…

They’ve also decided that it might be better if they renamed Osama bin laden “Dr Claw”, and install President Bush with all sorts of internal go-go-gadgets…

They’ve decided to rename Osama bin Laden “Saddam Hussein” – “…and that’s the end of that!” (wiping hands conclusively)

They’ve decided to rename Saddam Hussein “Osama bin Laden” – making the search and capture of the world’s greatest terror mastermind much easier. “Look, it’s great to have finally caught Osama,” said one spokesman, “But now we’ve lost Saddam. I guess you can’t win them all.”

“We realised the whole thing was a misunderstanding. The terrorists, deep down, want the same thing as us – to control the world with terror and force! From now on, we work together.”

By Wok and Mat

Warwick Holt and Mat Blackwell are long-time writing partners, who created the mega-award winning web series Bruce, and wrote loads of jokes for TV shows including Good News Week, The Sideshow and The Glass House. Several years of their raw material for those shows is posted right here on this blog.

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