1115.org

Corporate executives get golden parachutes and silver handshakes. 1115’s secret army of undercover agents discovered a few months ago that President George W. Bush has a secret compensation clause that was pushed through by the Republican Congress in 2005, and classified for national security reasons (along with so much else). We hesitated to go public with our scoop because our sources would only talk to us off-the-record, and nobody was willing to leak us the smoking gun documents that would have brought us everlasting fame and fortune.

However, over the weekend, our editorial board has mulled it over, and they concluded that we now have conclusive indirect proof to back up our story, so we are pleased to go public with it: George Bush has a secret frequent flyer program. And he gets triple miles for flying to trouble spots like Iraq or the Middle East (even if it’s only to the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh). For every 20,000 miles, he gets to extend the Iraq War by one Friedman unit. And here’s our proof:

News reports have the Peacemaker of the Western World slouching towards Bethlehem once again:

President George W. Bush heads back to the Middle East on Tuesday facing broad skepticism over his chances of securing an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal before he leaves office in less than nine months.
[…]
With the clock ticking down on his administration, Bush will nudge Israelis and Palestinians to advance their faltering negotiations as he tries to salvage a foreign policy legacy encompassing more than the unpopular war in Iraq.

But expectations for progress remain low.

“It’s hard to remember a less auspicious time to pursue Arab-Israeli peacemaking than right now,” said Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “The politics on the ground are absolutely miserable.”

It is not known whether George Bush still thinks there is more than enough time to achieve peace in the Middle East during his presidency. He’s certainly moved from doing nothing about it to actually putting a little effort into the process. But his efforts are still probably best filed under “Too Little”. And everybody except Bush himself (and Laura and Barney), Condi Rice (who has yet to be right about anything during the entire time she has spent with the Bush administration), Dana Perino (who hasn’t even bothered to try to be right about anything for a long time now), Prick Cheney (who wouldn’t know right if it came up and shot him in the face with a shotgun) and Bill Kristol (whose contract with the NYT specifies that he’s not allowed to be right about anything, ever) would agree that the Bush administration Middle East peace process efforts are doomed to be buried in a grave marked “Too Late”.

That’s certainly the view that Reuters embraces:

Increasingly pessimistic about Bush’s efforts, Israelis and Palestinians alike are starting to look past him to his successor who will be picked in the November election.
[…]
Bush is pressing ahead anyway, though critics still view it as too little, too late after years of neglecting the conflict. He made his first trip as president to Israel and the West Bank in January but came away with little to show for it.

And the two sides remain so far apart that Bush has no plans to bring the leaders together during his visit.

So why is Bush going at all, if not for the frequent flyer miles?

(If this was my geometry homework, at this point I would drop a curtsy and add a Q.E.D.)