More Troops, Please

The president, ever one to treat military service lightly, wants to increase the size of the armed forces. A lot of people think this is a batty idea because, without a draft, there isn't any obvious source of new soldiers. They need to think outside the box. Mark my words, it won't be long before some dim bulb in the lower ranks of the Republican Party puts 2 and 2 together and comes up with 18. First, they'll float the notion of "solving" our immigration "crisis" by offering military service as a fast track to citizenship. From there, it's a slippery slope to proposing to fix the overcrowding in our nation's prisons by reducing the sentences of non-violent offenders in exchange for a stint in The 'Raq.

They might as well not bother. For each day, Dick Cheney rises from a specially built ionized chamber in a secure, undisclosed location, gives thanks to the Dark Powers that keep his cold, black heart beating inside his rotting, hollow chest, and asks himself, "What would Darth Sidious do?"

On the question of recruiting an adequate number of troops to fight an endless, unwinnable war for the purpose of propping up a failing autocratic regime, the answer is clear: Sidious would build a clone army. Dick Cheney will, too.

Fig. 1: U.S. troops report for Operation Baghdad Surge

There is one wrinkle: It may be tough for the Republicans to find a suitable candidate among their ranks to play the Jango Fett role. After all, who among them has any military service, let alone enough to serve as the model for a ruthless army of killer clones? Our clone army might end up looking like this:

#31258 reporting for duty, Lord Cheney!

UPDATE: Well, that didn't take long:

Published: December 26, 2006 WASHINGTON: The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks — including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and put more immigrants on a faster track to U.S. citizenship if they volunteer — according to Pentagon officials.