mcsweeneys.net/2004/10/29warner.html
JAMES WARNER - - - - TO: (Recipients Withheld) FROM: General Jinjur, Provisional Proconsul of Oz SUBJECT: War on Wickedness IMPORTANCE: High Top Secret It seems a long time since Operation Bucket of Water was completed, the W icked Witch melted, and her followers shouted, "Hurrah for Dorothy! Retrospectively, that may have been the point where events began to diver ge from our prewar plans. Let it be said that the Wicked Witch was a highly desirable enemy, being undeniably wicked, readily identifiable by her skin pigmentation, unpopu lar, and, best of all, highly water-soluble. Would that our new enemies in Oz had all these attributes. More thought s hould have been given to the geopolitical consequences of wiping out the Wicked Witches of both the East and the West, the so-called Axis of Wic kedness. Thanks to the resulting power vacuum, Americans can no longer s afely venture outside the Emerald City. Beyond the walls of this high-se curity enclave, the emeralds have all been looted, and sewage flows in t he streets. The Yellow Brick Road remains unusable, due to attacks by Munchkin warlor ds. Militias loyal to Glinda, the "Good" Witch of the North, who, just f or the record, I never trusted, have launched a wide-scale insurgency. T he Witch of the South has been abducted by militant Winkie clerics. Our attempts to portray the armed resistance as a last-ditch attempt by a ha ndful of Wicked Witch of the West loyalists have lost all credibility. US forces have ceased to be viewed as liberators by many of the populat ion, perhaps due to some unfortunate comments about Munchkins by senior Army commanders, and the PR problems stemming from our use of the Wicked Witch of the West's dungeon for interrogation purposes. As for the current unrest stirred by Quadling suicide bombers, we're comp letely out of our depth, due to intelligence failures. All the state assets of Oz have been privatized, but unfortunately, there is no longer a state. This could be spun as ensuring a healthy legislat ive climate for multinationals, except of course for the general nonavai lability of water, electricity, or the rule of law. Our last PR offensiv e was seriously undermined by the recent attacks on private contractors by flying-monkey suicide bombers. We keep having to revise upwardly the strength of the anti-American resistance, making it hard for us to tap t he country's vast snake-oil reserves. The ruby slippers turn ed out to be made of tinsel, damaging the credibility of our characteriz ation of them as a weapon of mass destruction, and leaving us open to ch arges of having duped the American people into a bloody, multibillion-do llar fiasco. When we learned tha t our one-time ally the Wizard of Oz lacked popular support outside the Emerald City, we exfiltrated him, along with special agent "Dorothy," an d transferred sovereignty to a provisional ruling coalition of the Scare crow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion, but they seem to lack legitima cy, among other things. To deal with the situation in Oz, we have been forced to withdraw troops from the borders of Mordor, and are starting to seem seriously overstret ched. When I asked our former ally the former Wizard for a strategy to get our faction re-elected, he said we wouldn't need a strategy, as long as we h ad a slogan. He also suggest ed we keep the special effects coming, and make sure we stay hidden behi nd the curtain.
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