Part 1

“I clearly told the incoming Bush Administration about the monkey threat,” Bill Clinton said to Chris Wallace.
“Really?”
“Yeah it was on a memo somewhere I gave them.”
“What memo?”
“Uh… I don’t remember the name, but I do remember doodling a monkey in the margin of some classified memo… I believe I also drew an X-Wing shooting at a Tie Fighter above it.” Clinton wagged his finger at Wallace. “That was a warning, and President Bush should have heeded it!”
Wallace nodded. “Fair enough. Next question: You seem to be super-glued to who appears to be a common street hooker. What’s the story behind that?”
Clinton’s face turned red and he knocked over the table between them. “I won’t stand for this right-wing hit job! Let’s get out of here, Brandy!” He began to leave.
Brandy was pulled behind him. “Not like I have a choice!”
Condoleezza Rice turned off the TV. “We’re going to continue to be hammered for this. It’s time for decisive action against the monkeys!”
“Do you think they’ll use the nuclear bomb they stole?” President Bush asked. “I mean, are they going to blow up the Statue of Liberty like in Planet of the Apes?”
“We’re not dealing with Islamic terrorists, remember,” Condi said. “Unlike them, monkeys can be expected to act in their own interest, so I doubt they’ll actually use it against us. Instead, they’ll probably use the bomb for political leverage or sell it to fund monkey evil or buy lots of bananas.”
Bush pounded the war room’s table. “We can’t let them do that! That many bananas won’t be a balanced diet!”
Condi rolled her eyes. “Also, they might sell the bomb to terrorists who will use it against us.”
Bush thought about that. “Oh yeah; that’s bad too.” He turned to Rumsfeld. “What do you think we should do, Rummy?”
“I think we should make a decisive strike against Iran immediately!”
Bush was confused. “What does Iran have to do with this?”
Rumsfeld took a swig from his whiskey flask. “I dunno; I haven’t been listening to what you were talking about. I just want to attack Iran!” He crushed the metal flask in his hand. “I want to kill that little midget president of theirs and all of their ayatollahs!”
“We’ll have a war with Iran later,” Bush said. “Let’s focus on the monkey problem now.”
“Bah!” Rumsfeld stood up. “I’m going to go strangle some people. If you want to know what I’m up to, watch the six o’clock news.” He stormed out.
“Whatever; we can do this without you,” Bush called out to Rumsfeld. Bush looked to Buck the Marine. “So, what do you think?”
“Well… uh… I’m just a sergeant in the Marines,” Buck said. “I don’t really make these higher-level decisions. I just came down here because there was free pizza and beer.”
“And, since you ate some pizza, you now have to come up with a solution to the nuclear-armed monkey problem!” Bush told him.
Buck thought for a moment. “Can’t we just shoot them? I mean, they’re hairy and they make lots of gibberish sounds, so they’re just like for’ners. As you may know, my job and my favorite past time is kill’n for’ners.”
“Brilliant!” Bush exclaimed. “We’ll kill the monkeys by shooting them! That’s a plan we can work with. I want the American people to know that, if monkeys obtain nuclear weapons, they will be hunted down and killed like common for’ners.” Bush turned to Clancy. “You’re our intelligence guy. Where are the monkeys now?”
Clancy turned on a PowerPoint presentation and stood up. “Monkeys are twice as hard to find as terrorists. While terrorists hide in caves, monkey can hide both in caves and up in trees.” A slide appeared of a suspicious looking monkey in a tree.
“Oh no!” Bush yelled. “Monkeys could be in any tree right now with a nuclear weapon! We’re doomed!”
“Luckily, though,” Clancy continued, “through a source know as Google, we’ve found out there are lots of monkeys here.” On screen appeared a map of the Middle East and he pointed to an area on it.
Bush stood up. “There are lots of bad people there! We can’t let the monkeys sell the nuke to them! We have to go there and stop them!” He looked at the map some more. “Wait, what country is that?”
“That’s classified.”
Condi sighed. “Countries aren’t classified.”
“Fine,” Clancy said. “I just forgot what one it is. Now, excuse me, there’s some secret work I need to get to.” He walked off.
“That bathroom is the other way,” Condi called to him.
“We have to get a task force together and handle this,” Bush declared. “We can’t let the monkeys roam free or gain power, or things will end up like the Planet of the Apes, and no one wants that, right?”
“The original or the remake?” Buck asked. “In the remake, humans could talk, but they also didn’t have guns. I’d rather not talk and have guns.”
“Me too!” Bush exclaimed.
“While you’re off on another adventure, just remember there is going to be political fallout from this,” Condi said.
Bush scoffed. “Snowman will have that covered.”

“Now that monkeys have the nuclear bomb, hasn’t President Bush proved himself to be even more incompetent than Carter?”
“Let’s not resort to hyperbole,” White House Press Secretary Tony Snow answered. “Keep things in perspective. Monkeys are mischievous creatures, and they tend to steal small items. This time, they happened to grab a nuclear weapon. Still, they’re only monkeys, and they don’t have the capability to operate it.”
“Are we supposed to believe that a nuclear weapon simple enough for Kim Jong Il to use can’t be operated by monkeys?” a reporter asked.
Tony paused for a moment. “Wow, when did you guys learn to ask good questions? Anyway, whatever is the capability of the monkeys, they are being hunted down as we speak.”
“Aren’t you worried that all the anti-monkey sentiments right now will cause a backlash against monkeys?”
“Okay, now that’s the type of question I’m more used to. So, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Just the other day,” the reporter said, “Senator Allen was jumped on by a monkey. He then threw it off and yelled, ‘Get your paws off me, you damn, dirty macaca!’ Aren’t you worried about more such anti-monkey slurs?”
“The Bush Administration is working hard to make sure that peaceful monkeys are respected and…” Tony paused for a moment. “Know what? I’m just going to come out and say we don’t care what people call monkeys.”
“And you don’t care that monkeys are currently being indiscriminately rounded up and imprisoned?” shouted a hysterical reporter.
Tony took a deep breath. “Those are called zoos, and they been around long before this kerfuffle.”
“But, now that monkeys have nuclear weapons, shouldn’t we change the status quo?”
“You guys are starting to get retarded,” Tony said. “You keep it up, and I’m going to give you all a timeout again.”
“Melinda Hawkish, FOX News.” She pushed forward in front of the other reporters. “We’ve passed each other a few times in the hallway back when you worked at FOX News yourself.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I remember you, Melinda. What’s your question?”
“Doesn’t this whole incident further illustrate the Bush Administration’s impotence on the national stage? Why haven’t they immediately responded to the monkeys’ provocation by attacking one of their strongholds, such as bombing the rainforest?”
“That’s just not the way we’re handling it.”
“The American people demand bombings and cool video footage of it!” Melinda shouted.
“Calm down! What the American people should know is that we have a very competent team working on this right now.”

“Well, we have our team together.” Bush stood in the sands of Arabia and looked to the horizon. “There’s me, the brilliant leader and strategerist. There’s Buck the Marine who loves killing for’ners.”
“I just shoot them,” Buck said. “Whether they die or not is up to them.”
“And then there’s U.N. Ambassador Bolton whose mustache is rumored to be able to survive a nuclear blast.”
“My ‘stache bristles with fury,” Bolton declared.
“And my wife, who I’m bringing along since she says we don’t do enough together.”
She held up some paper bags. “I packed everyone lunches.”
“And, last and least, two people I’ve never seen before who can die to give this situation some needed gravitas.”
“We are psyched to be helping you out, Mr. President!” said Bill the intern.
“Super-psyched!” Jill the intern added.
“It’s just great to be a part of something like this!” Bill continued. “I always hoped for experience like this because I want to have big career in politics.”
“I’m so excited for the future!” Jill said. “Yay!”
Bush nodded. “Good. Statements like that will only make it seem all the more tragic when you die.”
Laura swatted Bush across the back of his head. “Stop taunting the interns about how they’re going to die.”
“Fine. Let’s get going!” Bush marched into the desert.
“Shouldn’t we have a vehicle or something?” Buck asked. “Or, at least, a camel?”
Bush looked at Buck with disgust. “You really are a whiner, Buck. I hope you have a better attitude when you start your eighth tour in Iraq after this.”

Elsewhere in Arabia, Kim Jong Il tried to fix his mangled poofy hair. “We track monkeys here! We teach them for what they did to my hair and my dong! It no longer stand up!”
“We’ll get the nuclear bomb back,” the aide said, “but do we really need to carry the missile with us the whole way?” He pointed to the North Korean troops carrying a missile who were lagging behind them.
“Yes! It great dong! Take ten people to carry! As soon as we get nukey boom boom back, we unleash the dong! We make big explosion! Then American and everyone else will fear me and my dong! Dong! Dong! Dong! Dong! Dong! …”
TO BE CONCLUDED…