THE PRESIDENT: As you folks out there who waste time reading those newspaper things probably already know, the gossipy elites at the New York Times just can't seem to keep their matzo-ball-chomping traps shut when they find out information that might be of interest to Americans and/or terrorists.

It has gotten to the point where the New York Times checking into something this administration needs to do without interference from that terrorist-coddling Constitution thing has become more predictable than Dick Cheney and Lindsay Lohan checking into an emergency room on the same day. Up to their usual shenanigans, on January 7, 2006, those yakkity-yaks in New York saw fit to reveal the findings of a secret Pentagon study that found that as many as 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor.

Now, what the Pentagon was doing being all sciencey and analyzing stuff related to running a war in the first place is a mystery to me, but the results of any study like that aren't something that folks need to know, particularly over here in the West Wing. As anyone in my administration or family will tell you, I'm not a big believer in folks knowing stuff -- starting with me. Nevertheless, I've tried to be patient with those fact-flaunting troublemakers at the New York Times, but I'm just about at the end of my prop wrangling rope with them. In fact, I'm seriously considering finally letting Dick have his way and taking a posse from the Heritage Foundation up to New York and shutting down that whole nosy enterprise. My Attorney General Alberto "Of Course It's Legal, Boss!" Gonzales assures me that the Executive authority to turn off the power at all of our country's less fawning media outlets was expressly given to me by Congress when some senator from a state whose identity remains classified gave me a "Conserve Energy Now" lapel pin about four or five years ago.

Get the GODLY New Book!

Oh, I know what those Constitution-crazy liberals out there say about those unfounded rumors of the press being protected by something somewhere in something called the Constitutional. After all, I listen to their calls. But that's all just ACLU hogwash. I ask you this: if you are guaranteed the right to a "free press," why is that the New York Times hits you up for a dollar each time you get their stinking paper? Bet you liberal smarties never thought about that one before.

In any event, I think it is time that we stopped pandering to the intellectual elites' weird fetish for knowledge, which only encourages folks to think that newspapers should contain anything more interesting than sports scores and coupons for your groceries. Because one thing that should never wind up in a newspaper is information that embarrasses this administration (also, coincidentally, known as "breaches of national security").

Not so long ago, those same dreidel-spinning chatterboxes at the Times told you folks out there about our previously super-double-secret domestic spying venture, which is 1000% totally and completely legal (but you are going to have to trust me on that because the laws that make it absolutely legal are so super-triple-secret they can't be on the books and are known only to Dick Cheney). In any event, since all of you all found out that Dick and I are listening to all of your calls, a few of you potty-mouths have cleaned up your act a bit, but terrorists have continued in their willful refusal not to loudly discuss their detailed bombing plans on cell phones while shopping for Jaclyn Smith burkas at Wal-Mart. I also noticed that Maureen Dowd has gotten a whole lot less specific about that thing she does with her tongue for gentleman callers.

As if interrupting you folks from your important shopping to tip you off to the fact that America's telephone system is just one big party-line wasn't bad enough, those loose-lipped blabbermouths over there at the New York Times have now revealed that our troops are getting killed, not because of insurgents, but because someone at the Pentagon still hasn't gotten around to signing a purchase order for new armor. In doing so, the Times has told terrorists something that they would never have otherwise guessed: that American soldiers in Iraq are sitting ducks.

Now, as I said, I don't know why the Pentagon was navel-gazing about the fantastical, imaginary relationship between how well planned and well equipped a war is and the chances of any of the blue collar boys and girls we ship overseas to fight it ever returning to their families. But it appears that some Pentagon nincompoop has gone and done a report that looks alarmingly close to actual analysis of this war. And if there is one thing I have told all those anal-retentive Chicken Littles over the Department of Defense, it is that so-called "planning" and "analyzing" a war is about as big a waste of time as "budgeting" for it!

Those military dunderheads just haven't cottoned on to the fact that the actual results of a war have no bearing whatsoever on its official success. After all, no matter what badly things go, no one in the White House or Pentagon is ever, ever, ever going to say anything negative. Why? Because it is my administration's wartime national policy that every war is super-successful, the completely uncontrollable, unplannable outcome notwithstanding. And to say down-in-the-mouth, defeatist, cut-and-run things about the war in Iraq -- like pointing out that my administration's failure to supply so-called "adequate" armor to our troops was the direct cause of many of their deaths -- well, that kind of negative talk just puts our troops in harms way.

So, all you journalists out there: keep a lid on it. Because loose lips sink poll numbers. Watch what you say. And remember: we're listening.

Thank you, and Jesus Bless America.

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