Huck Finn In Iraq

Now I have no meaning to insult anyone by having to remind them that I am as ignorant and humble born as a person could ever possibly be.  And yet somehow adventures keep coming out of nowheres and keep taking me with them.  And that's the only ways I can come close to explaining how I comes to meet President George.

If you've been reading bout my other adventures, you'll know that we had a horrible time of it with the king and the duke.  And you'd be well advised to think that President George was another one of them lying scoundrel scalawag just like those others.  But right at the outset he calmed my mind by showing me a certificate saying hows he's graduated from some big eastern University.  And then he shows me a t'other certificate saying hows he's also attended the Electoral College.  And that the perfessers there had gone and selected him to be President.

Well, once that was all established and certain, I didn't know what to say.  But President George had plenty.  'Cause he wanted us to go with him and help liberate some people all the way on t'other side of the world.

That sore worried African American Jim right at the get go.  He says, 'Scuse me, suh.  But I's had terruble troubles jes liveratin' ol' Jim.'

And I says, 'Jim here's my friend.  And I'm always bound and determined to help him, no matter what.  But I hain't no Abolitionist.  I can't go around liberatin' folks whuts belongs to other folks.'

But President George said that he weren't no Abolitionist neither.  And that I was missing the whole point.  Because these here people he was talkin' about had this astonishing large treasure in gold.  'Cept it weren't ordinary gold, but black gold.  And that when we wuz done liberatin' them, we wuz all going to be richer than the richest merchant who could have ever lived in New Orleans.

But that weren't the half of it.  Because these peoples wuz ruled by an evil king named Hoosayn.  'Cept that they don't call them kings over there, they calls them Saddams.  And he allowed that when we goes and defeats this Saddam Hoosayn on the field of battle, and then capture and kill him, why then we're gonna be the most famous and renowned two people in the entire world.  And I'm thinking to myself, not even Tom Sawyer can come up with adventures that are this so flat out adventuresome.

Well, now this plan was starting to make sense.  And when President George said that we wuz gonna be seeing Ai-rabs and camels and maybe elephants and maybe dancin' girls in gauzy dresses, I was plumb hooked.

But Jim, he wuz scaired when he found out that we wuz gonna be rafting down the Tigers and You-Fraidies River.  He says, 'If yooz afrayeds o' dat river, why's you goin'?'  And, "I don like snakes, suh.  And tigers, they be even warse!'  And all he ever done heard of Ai-rabs wuz that they had magic lamps and that they cast terrible dreadful spells.  (Maybe that's 'cause I had told him so just a few weeks back.)  And he didn't want no part of none of it.

So now it was just me and President George.  And I can't tell you how we got over there, 'cause you'd never believe me, not when I told you about the flying Air First One.  And even if you did believe me, than you'd up and think that President George wuz one o' them sorcerers Jim wuz so scaired of.  But he weren't.  In fact, once you got past him using some of them strange University words like 'misunderestimate', and once you got past his funny Texas ways of talking, he was downright plain and simple..

Anyways, before I could get over my amazements, we up and transported over here to this place of Iraq.  Although President George didn't use the word 'transported', he said that we wuz now 'dee-ployed'.  Indeed there weren't no time before we wuz dee-ployed dab in the middle of the Tigers River.  Just like he said we wuz goin' to be.  'Cept that I hain't seen no tigers yet.

Now this river here weren't like the Mississippi.  No, it was skinny and rather wretched.  Furthermore, there weren't no forests crowdin' the shoreline.  At most there wuz a few palm trees.  Other than that it was mostly dirt.  In fact, the whole blastin' country was nothin' but dirt.

So there weren't no logs floatin' along that we could tie together.  But what this river did have wuz hundreds and hundreds of metal barrels.  That's what President George said the local people stored their black gold in.  I still hain't seen none of that, but maybe that's because I wuz so busy lashing all them barrels together.  President George, he tried to help.  But I guess that all he's good at is being President, 'cause he doesn't seem to be too good at nothing else that I've seen.

Well, we'd been moving along at night for a certain while, seeing as how when we tried to go during the daylight, then some of the Ai-rabs along the shoreline would be shooting at us.  President George said that they wuz Saddam Hussayn's men, but pretty soon he wuz gonna bring the United States Army over here and show them who's boss.  Meantime, though, we had to be hiding and sneakin'.

Things had been going like this for about a week, I guess, and I wuz starting to settle in and we wuz making good progress.  Then one early morning, just as the light was about to break and just as I was hunting up a place near a grove of palms to hide the raft, who should show up a'paddling along on two of them barrels but two of the scraggliest, orneriest men that I have ever seen.  When they got real close they shouted out that they wuz Americans, and so that we had to let them aboard.  So I guess we had to, and we did.

Now the first of these two rapscallions was really tiny and wiry and old.  And I could tell right away from his eyes and his thin lips that he wuz just as mean a man as my pap.  Maybe meaner.  And as soon as he gets on our raft and shakes off some of the dirty water that was all over him, he interduces himself as the Secretary of Deefense. 

His partner gets on the raft, too.  He looks just a bit younger than the first one, but still pretty old. And he's kind of portly and totally bald, and he keeps holding his side like he's a-feared that he's about to have a heart attack.  And he stands up as straight as possible and shakes off his dirty water, and he declares himself to be the Vice-President.

Now don't that beat all?  What be the odds of having all these high ranking and prominent people all here together just on the whim of Providence?  I couldn't hardly contain myself.  I said, 'Gentlemen, I'm right proud to meet you.  My name is Huck Finn.  And this person here... is President George!'

I could tell right away that they wuz taken aback.  'Cause a Secretary of Deefense is might important.  And a Vice President even more so.  But a President, well he's the outrankingest of them all.  And I could 'mediately tell that these others didn't appreciate being outranked.

But President George showed them his certificates.  And they had to accept it.  Although I had my suspicions right away that, they bein' up to no good, and President George being a trusting soul, but maybe not the most intelligent of ones, our plan of liberatin' might well be way-layed.

Not that my thoughts on the matter would 'a made any difference.  I wuz always s'posed to be steering the raft, whilst they wuz in the wigwam up in the front studying up plans to attacking Saddam Hoosayn's black golden palace at Bag Dad. 

Now about them plans, I wuz starting to get a mite worried.  'Cause, first of all, when I happened to ask in passing if any of them's ever been in a war, they all said that, yes, indeed, they had had the chance.  But unfortunately for alls of them, they were made to be de-furred instead.

So I asked them if they had any experience in handling guns and shooting 'em.  And they looked at each other kind of sheepish.  Finally the Vice President allows that he had had a chance once to shoot some quails. But instead he had shot someone in the face with buckshot, so's that ever since no one has allowed him near no guns any more.

That brings the story up to about the present.  Bag Dad is just a few days off now.  And there still hain't been no United States Army showing up.  But President George says not to worry.  And the Vice President says that this here will be a cakewalk.  And the Secretary of Deefense says that all them Ai-rabs will indeed be treating us as the conquering heroes and as the Liberators that we be.

For me, I'm just hoping and praying that ol' Jim wuz wrong and that President George is right.  And that maybe in a few days, after we whip that Saddam and bring him to justice, and after all the praising and all the celebrating, that I'm going to have myself over twenty giant wooden treasure chests, just like famous pirates have, all filled to the brim with that black gold.

And if this adventure works out perfect and just so, then I'll also be getting  to see myself one of them dancin' girls.  And maybe an elephant besides.