An Open Letter
to Saddam Hussein

October 11, 2002
Midland, TX

Dear Mr. Hussein,

Now I know that you think that just because your little country happens to be sitting on top of an ocean of oil that it by all rights ought to belong to you. I’m sorry to have to tell you that you have another think coming.

Even BIG countries like China and Russia understand that it is good ol’ American know-how that finds the oil and that has the technology to produce and transport it. Even the big guys understand that that means the Americans in question (read: Texans) rightly expect a good cut of the profits.

Of course when it comes to the smaller countries, like your fellow Arabs, the truth is they’re just branch offices of ExxonMobil, Shell, etc., dressed up as countries. And everybody in the world understands that’s the way things should be. Everybody EXCEPT YOU.

I would’ve thought you learned your lesson that time when you wanted to expand your own already gigantic oil field by annexing poor little Kuwait. Look what happened then.

It’s really important for you to remember the person slapping your hand that time wasn’t even a REAL West Texas boy. Daddy Bush was just a transplant who had sidled down this way to try his hand in the oil patch, but he remained a Whiffenpoof through and through who didn’t get much of anywhere in Texas until he moved to Houston and discovered there’s only one thing Houston money respects more than a British accent and that is a Yankee with four names.

No matter how faulty Daddy Bush’s credentials, he put you in your place but good in front of CNN and the whole world.

And now you’ve gone and got Baby Bush riled up. I’m not saying it’s fair but surely a man of the world like yourself long ago gave up expecting this world to be fair.

The problem is, fair or not, Baby Bush has got you in his AUTHENTIC West Texas sights. Lesser men than you, Mr. Hussein, have been known to pee (or worse) in their pants when a West Texas Daddy gets them in his sights.

I’m not saying that Baby Bush is smarter than you, or that he’s braver than you, or that he’s better with women if you know what I mean but he WAS born and bred right here in the heart of God’s Country, rattlesnakes and all. (I know sometimes watching Baby Bush on TV it may be a little hard to take him all that seriously when he starts sounding like the Permian Basin High School principal scolding the football team for some minor sexual transgression.)

All I’m saying is 1) he’s really unhappy Bagdad-wise because he (and of course his friends in those big shiny buildings in Houston) is tired of you messing with the world oil market, and 2) (and this is the really important part of my message, Mr. Hussein) he’s got the guns and the posse to erase you so completely that there won’t even be a smudge left in the revered Fertile Crescent that we all remember as the Cradle of Civilization to show you were ever there.

Let’s go over this one more time, Mr. Hussein. Why is he so upset? Come on, now. Have you been paying attention?

OK, I’ll say it again. Baby Bush is upset with Saddam because Saddam won’t let Baby Bush play with his oil. And Baby Bush has the wherewithal to take Saddam’s oil away from him.

Is it fair, all this talk about "weapons of mass destruction"? No. Is Baby Bush being a bit of a bully? Maybe. But in West Texas we don’t talk much about fair, and we talk even less about bullies. Out here what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine unless you can keep me from taking it away from you, hook- or-crook-wise. This is what used to be known as "the Law West of the Pecos."

Your problem is that nobody in the world can stop Baby Bully Bush from taking whatever he (and of course Karl and Condoleeeezzzaaa) decide is good for him to take.

What it comes down to, Mr. Hussein, is it’s time to toady.

Your only survival option at this point is: grovel like crazy. Let those UN inspection guys in and let ‘em look in every God-forsaken nook and cranny of Tigris-and-Euphrates-land.

Do that and you’ll find that while good ol' West Texas boys are not exactly what you’d call gracious winners, they also don’t go out of their way to completely humiliate their defeated peers—and you can be sure, Mr. Hussein, that Baby Bush views you as a peer, somebody who sees the world exactly the way he does. It takes one to know one.

Chances are good that if you grovel properly, you’ll be left with your title and at least a couple of your presidential palaces and however many wives you can still keep up with after all this stress (if you get my drift). Worse comes to worse (because you have been a pain in the a-- for some time now), they'll set you up in Bimini or Pago Pago with your very own resort hotel.

True, some of your neighbors may snicker behind your back afterward, but then you and I know that those neighbors have been brown-nosing the Bush clan but good for quite some time now, so they don’t have much room to snicker.

Think it over, Mr. Hussein.