Old Europe Compares Bush to Saddam
By MICHAEL J. TOTTEN

LD EUROPE, April 6 - After a stunning series of recent developments, leaders of Old European states are comparing U.S. President George W. Bush to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

"I am shocked by the actions of the American government," said French President Jacques Chirac in a press conference. "Bush is as dangerous as Saddam Hussein. The two have become morally equivalent."

White House Spokesperson Ari Fleischer dismissed Mr. Chirac's comments during today's morning press conference. "The French are descendents of monkeys and frogs," he said. "Chirac is a criminal. His grave awaits him."

The controversy began late last year when Mr. Bush addressed the U.S. Congress and called out the names of "traitors" from both the Democratic and Republican parties. Tom Daschle (D - South Dakota), John McCain (R - Arizona), Nancy Pelosi (D - California), and Olympia Snow (R - Maine) were the first to be denounced. They were strongarmed into the hallway by Attorney General John Ashcroft and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge where they were promptly gunned down by elite members of the Bush Republican Guard. Mr. Bush smoked a cigar while he read the list of names, then wept into a handkerchief after 177 members of Congress were executed.

Afterward Mr. Bush gave an impromptu press conference where he claimed to fulfill his campaign promise to reform the United States of America from a multiparty liberal democracy into a totalitarian fascist police state.

"There are still traitors in our midst," he said when Helen Thomas questioned whether the purge was really successful. "We will litter the streets of Washington and New York with their corpses."

Mr. Bush ordered a raid on the campaign headquarters of Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean before deploying US Army divisions to opposition strongholds in California and Vermont. The Vermont division is commanded by Paul "the Sidewinder" Wolfowitz, and the California division by Donald "Bloody Rummy" Rumsfeld. Hundreds of Vermont villages were sprayed with mustard gas and VX toxin, and millions of New England refugees have streamed across the Canadian border. San Francisco and Berkeley were shelled for 40 days and 40 nights, and pop celebrity Barbra Streisand was reportedly filmed being fed feet first into a logging shredder.

Former Vice President Al Gore has fled to London where began organizing an umbrella group of exiled American dissidents called the American National Congress. The Bush Administration dismisses the organization as a "French stooge," which Mr. Bush claims is not supported by the American people.

American state-run news channel CNN has repeatedly played a video tape without sound of a meeting with Mr. Bush and his advisors, which critics dismiss as a ploy by the Administration to drum up support for its policies at home. Old European experts on Mr. Bush have remarked upon the astonishing presence of a woman at the meeting. Veteran anti-American expert Robert Fisk of London's Independent has tentatively identified the mysterious woman as Condoleeza Rice, who is thought to be in charge of America's biological weapons program.

Mr. Bush is also accused by critics abroad of cowing the American populace by erecting statues and murals of himself on every street corner, and by repeatedly broadcasting a video clip of himself firing a rifle into the air above a screaming horde of worshipping supplicants with tank cannons at their backs.

Mr. Chirac accuses the Bush Administration of gross human rights violations against the American people, and warns that the United States poses a threat to the security of the world. Both European and American critics dismiss Mr. Chirac's claims as the boasts of a "unilateralist," a "rogue," and even a "terrorist" who seeks to distract French voters from minor economic setbacks.

Leaders of a few other European states, however, have joined the French president in his criticism of Mr. Bush. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder affirmed Germany's "special relationship" with France, and warned of America's "really scary" weapons program. Japan seconded Mr. Schroeder's claims, and even voiced suspicions that the United States may have nuclear weapons. The Japanese Secretary of State delivered a presentation to the United Nations showing nuclear mushroom clouds exploding the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar scoffed and accused the Japanese of hysterically making the whole thing up.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair held a press conference outside 10 Downing Street where he said Germany and France are exaggerating the threat from the United States as a pretext for acquiring the oil reserves in Oklahoma and Texas. "Is it a coincidence that George Bush is from Texas, and that Texas has oil?" Mr. Blair asked rhetorically. "I don't think so," he added. "We know what the French are really up to." Mr. Blair cited as evidence that French oil company TotalFinaElf donated heavily to Chirac's re-election campaign.

Mr. Bush was recently invited to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's farm outside Krafurd, Israel. Mr. Sharon is said to have ordered an American invasion of Canada on the pretext that Quebec is rightfully America's 51st state.

"Yessssssssss, Master," Mr. Bush reportedly said to his Jewish overlord. "Whatever Master wants. We likes Master. Master is good to us." Mr. Bush then flew to one of his gold and marble palaces built for himself all across the country, where he ordered the Bush Republican Guard to prepare the invasion.

With the American armed forces poised on the Canadian border, French and German claims of moral equivalence between Bush and Saddam have only increased. "Bush used chemical weapons on his own people, he massacres political dissidents, and he is a threat to his neighbors," said Valerie Giscard d'Estaing, French chairman of the Convention on the Future of Europe. "Just like Saddam Hussein."

A recent Le Monde poll asked French voters if, on the off chance, a war were to break out between the United States and Iraq, would they want the Americans or the Iraqis to win? French public opinion is evenly divided. The Paris Street thinks Mr. Bush and Mr. Hussein are equally dangerous and morally equivalent, and is therefore torn both ways. One third hoped for an Iraqi victory, another third chose an American victory, and the remaining third was undecided.