"Toxic Fumes" appears in East Tennessee's Environmental Journal, The Hellbender Press (http://www.hellbenderpress.com/).
Bush Retracts Promise of Peaceful Human-Fish Coexistence
By Scott McNutt
Citing confidential evidence, President Bush today asserted that intelligent fish secretly engineered Hurricane Katrina and called on Congress to authorize him to do "whatever it takes" to address the piscatorial threat. Following is the text of the President’s speech.
My fellow Americans, I come before you to tell you that the unprecedented devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina beginning August 29th, 2005, was not an act of nature as previously believed. Nor was it an act of God. I have spoken with Him about that and He cleared that up for me.
No, it was a terrorist act. We received a communication from a school of Jewfish, AKA Epinephelus itajara, and members of the Goliath Grouper clan, claiming responsibility for spawning the killer storm. The communiqué states that the terrorist Groupers acted to draw attention to their candidacy for the United States Endangered Species List. They accuse our government of ignoring the mass harvesting of their species until 1990, when their candidacy was first announced, and delaying their addition to the list since then.
They demand their immediate and unconditional inclusion on the Endangered Species List. They claim other fishes will join their cause if we do not submit. They threaten more hurricanes if we do not submit. They also insist that humans cease referring to the slaughtering of fish species to the brink of extinction as "harvesting."
First let me say that their claim is without foundation. As a candidate for the presidency of the United States of America, on September 29, 2000, I stood in Saginaw, Michigan, and proclaimed, "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." As president, I have stroved- stroven- -strived? -strife? -strife to fulfill that promise. And I still believe that man can cohabitate with most of our little gilled brethren and cistern.
But with the Jewfish who perpetrated this terrorist act, we cannot and will not cohabilitate! These Groupers are nothing but extremists angling to extort the United States into underwriting their extreme, tropical lifestyles.
Well, I believe this extreme species is not representative of other marine life. I know they don’t represent the bluegills. So the United States will not yield to blackmail by a group of Groupers that are nothing more than a rabble of grousers. And we will continue to refer to the slaughtering of fish species to near extinction as "harvesting."
At this time, it is unclear how the Jewfish came into possession of the technology to create Weather of Mass Destruction. I have directed Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove to form a White House Intelligent Groupers Group modeled after WHIG, the White House Iraq Group, which hauled in the evidence we needed to invade Iraq. He has already learned that yellow cake is a tempting lure for Groupers, and there are more leads like that out there. We will play those leads out. Even as we speak our forces are diligently trolling the bayous of Louisiana. Have no fear, we will entangle these rogue fishes in the nets of freedom.
These Jewfish have made it clear that the shores of the Gulf Coast is now the central front in their war against humanity. We saw the future the terrorists intend for our nation on that fateful morning of August the 29th, 2005. That day we learned that vast oceans and friendly dolphins are no longer enough to protect us.
August the 29th changed our country; it changed the policy of our government. We adopted a new stratego to protect the American people: We would hunt down and scale the Groupers wherever they group; we would make no distinction between these terrorists and the oceans that harbor them; and we would advance our security at home by advancing fishing in the sea.
We are now confronting new dangers with firm resolve. With these murderous, aquatic thugs we will stand nose to gill and toe to tail and fight them hand to fin. We will fight this war without wavering - and we will prevail.
August 29th also changed the way I viewed threats like Jewfish. I saw the destruction they could cause with big wind, lots of water and dangerously underfunded levees - and I imagined the destruction they could cause with even more powerful weather systems.
At that time, the leaders of both political parties recognized this new reality: We cannot allow the world’s most dangerous fish to get their flippers on the world’s most dangerous weather. Now, some spineless jellyfish in the other party are saying we should put into port, that we’ve exceeded our limit. To retreat before victory would be an act of recklessness and dishonor … and I will not allow it. I will not be chicken of the sea.
In an age of terrorism and Weather of Mass Destruction, if we wait for storms to fully materialize, we will have once again ignored the warning of the National Hurricane Center. The terrorists understand this, and that is why they have now made the Gulf of Mexico the central front in the war on terror.
The enemy of harvesting in the Gulf of Mexico is a combination of inclusionists and terrorists. The largest group is the inclusionists. They are ordinary fishies, who miss the privileged status they had under the surf before men came. They desire all fish to be placed on the Endangered Species List. We believe that, over time, most of this group will be persuaded to support their own eventual extinction, fed by a federal government that is strong enough to reel them in with false promises while ignoring their sad little bubbly cries.
The terrorists affiliated with the Jewfish are the smallest group, but the most lethal Groupers. These terrorists have goals. They want to stop the advance of progress in the gulf. They want to make the gulf what the arctic was before global warming - a safe haven for indigenous life forms. They are brutes, living lawlessly, in a state of nature, indifferent to civilization’s allure. They don’t even wear pants. These are fish without conscience - and against such enemy, there is only one effective response: We will cast our lines long, we will keep them taut, and we will keep the jig moving.
To achieve their goals, the Groupers are targeting innocent human people. They know they cannot defeat us militarily. The enemy has only the ability to create chaos for the cameras with spectacular acts of weather. And to cunningly slip our best-set hooks – they have that ability too.
To meet these challenges, our tactics will continue to evolve, but our goal will not change: a fish-free and fully drilled Gulf seabed. I strongly believe a Gulf full of drilling platforms is a crucial part of our stratego to defeat the terrorists. As more gulf drilling platforms strike oil, American citizens will have a stake in the utter destruction of all marine life in that region.
So the Groupers are trying to break our lines in hope of forcing America to leave the seaweed fields early. But the terrorists can prevail only if we lose our rods and leave before the drilling is done. And that is not going to happen while I have the con.
Victory will be achieved by meeting certain clear objectives: When Gulf Coast trawlers can feed their own people, when the gulf’s seafloor is completely drilled and when the Gulf of Mexico is not a safe haven for fishes to hatch attacks against our country. These objectives, not size limits set by politicians in Washington, will drive our force levels in the gulf.
As fish populations go down, we will stand down. And our troops will come home with mission accomplished, with the enemy defeated, with honors aplenty, and with the catch of the day.
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