June 30, 2003 - As a sign of honor and respect to the widows of the numerous servicemen killed during the past weeks in Iraq, President Bush launched "Operation Desert Beg", setting out to the desert of California to pretend the deaths weren't occurring at fundraisers for his re-election campaign, claming "mission accomplished" again and again.

"This really helps to ease the pain," said Betty Arnold, whose husband was gunned down while he was eating a sandwich and waiting for President Bush to come up with a plan for doing the job in Iraq.  "When I lost my husband, and as I continue to see his fellow servicemen gunned down and blown up to death each day, I, for a moment, began to think the President really had never come up with a plan for the war.  But when I saw him claiming "victory" and "mission accomplished" once again at those fundraisers out in California, New York, and around the country, I realized he truly did have a plan, that my husband's life went for the great cause of helping the President raise money to keep himself and the Republicans in charge.  It sort of helped me to get through it all."

Margaret Alfred, mother of Sgt. Steven Alfred, who was exploded into pieces while sitting on watch, no particular task or goal assigned, cited Vice President Cheney's Virginia fundraising as her beacon of hope through it all.

"He and the President never mention the continuing deaths.  For a while, I was afraid they had forgotten we ever began a war in Iraq.  But, at last, Vice President Cheney went to that fundraiser and bragged about the "victory" to milk some million or so dollars out of people, and so at least I knew he remembered there was a place named Iraq, and that we had sent servicemen and women over there at some point."

Still, Mrs. Alfred was not entirely satisfied.

"It would have been nice if they would have mentioned Steve.  He was my only son.  Oh, and to actually start working on a plan beyond that first month of fighting might be nice, too.  You know, like they had the post war plan to give $600 million dollars in rebuilding and oil contracts to Vice President Cheney's old company Haliburton.  They had that plan in place before the war, even began to give the contracts out during the first week of the war.  If only they had planned for the rest of the postwar plan.  But I guess focusing on money for themselves - through nepotistic contracts and fundraising on the backs of hundreds of corpses - is better than getting nothing out of the war and the deaths."

"I always thought there would be the phone call from the President if anything terrible happened," said the now-widowed Mrs. Arnold.  That call never came, but another one did.  "At least I got the recorded phone call with the President's voice - the one that came from the Republican National Committee, talking about the "victories" and asking for a donation to help the party with the next election.  Hearing the President's voice begging me for cash was at least something."

Asked if she gave a donation in response to the phone call, Mrs. Arnold said, "Nah.  I figured my husband's corpse was enough of a donation to his re-election campaign.  I'm just not sure if it will work well with the new Campaign Finance laws, but I'm sure the President will figure that out long before he starts to actually plan what our strategy is in Iraq."