Kicking a Pregnant Woman Can Be a Bummer...

[We've been here before -- the scene: a plush office in the Dream Zone. The Dream Zone is located in Bodybag, the capital of Wudda-Wrek. This is the only place in that sovereign state where an free, Arrogant citizen can walk freely about with little fear of a bullet or a piece of shrapnel flying through his bag of popcorn. Every other place in Wudda-Wrek is known as the Bloody Zone.]

An aide rushes in...

"O no," groans the bald, fat man behind the desk, "it's not Brackwater again?"

"No, sir."

"Cornflake and Hallibut?"

"No, sir -- three of our Arrogant soldiers were killed."

"Bomb?"

"Gunfire, sir, close range."

"Well, you know the procedure, flag draped coffins, no pictures -- why bother me about it?"

"Sir, the gunman was a soldier!"

"What!?"

"A soldier from the Wudda-Wrek Army we have been standing up so that we can stand down blew them all away."

Silence, "Well, he must have been an infiltrator of some kind -- an al-Qube suicider?"

"He didn't kill himself sir, and from his name he's from the al-Janubbi clan -- hardly someone the al-Qube could recruit."

"Well then, do you have a better explanation of what happened?"

"Well sir, they were on patrol and they entered this house. No body was home except this young pregnant woman and the soldiers started yelling at her, slapping her around, you know, to soften her up. She fell down and they kicked her some -- in the stomach, even."

"O."

"So this Caesar al-Janubbi, the Wudda-Wrek soldier who was on patrol with the Arrogants, begged them to stop -- but they just laughed and told him they could do whatever they wanted to do. So he went out to the patrol car, grabbed a gun, went back in the house and killed three of our soldiers..."

An extended silence, "Well, we all know that it's not the facts but the story that matters. The point is that it has just been announced that no one will be charged for the murder of 24 people in Hardteetha, most of them were women, children and old men -- you do see that the "facts" could be a bit sticky?"

"Yessir!"

The story is that this fellow was a nut case who had been recruited by al-Qube. There was no young woman alone in the house and she wasn't pregnant. Our brave soldiers were treacherously betrayed and shot in the back -- that's a much better explanation."