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February  25, 2003 intel It shames me to admit I do not see what I am supposed to see when I'm shown satellite surveillance photographs. "As you can plainly see from this photograph, our enemy operates a plutonium enrichment facility from this building.  And over here...go to the next slide...here we see the actual missiles used to deliver the nuclear payloads." I look around the briefing room.  It's jerky with nodding and knowing glances.  As senior staffer for a Joint Chief, I should be nodding and glancing to beat the band.  But I'm not.  I don't see shit.  I never do. While the other buzzcuts are murmuring and topping off their coffees, I stare at the photographs frozen on the projector screen.  If I squint the way I do on the firing range, it's apparent that our enemy has not a plutonium enrichment facility, but an enormous Lego block.  Perhaps our enemy has an army of giant, mutant children who are fighting-cranky after their naps.  I smile as though feeble-minded, imagining a toddler, 150' tall, staggering his way across the desert sand, plutonium-enrichment-facility-Lego in his plump, spastic hand. "What're you grinnin' at, Larry?  You look like God's-own-idjit squinting at them there pitchers." My name is not Larry, but the junior staffer from Tennessee who is ruining my daydream could, in fact, ruin a wet dream.  He calls me by a different name at every staff briefing, but I never correct him.  It's the only thing I like about him. Now I squint at the cylinders lined up adjacent to the Lego block.  Oh, sweet Jesus!  We are in the crosshairs of long-range Cannelloni, intermediate-range Rigatoni, and Bucatini scuds.  It dawns on me.  This is going to be messy.

©  2003 by the beastmaster