It’s very dangerous in this world of political humor. You could be rolling along and all of a sudden your Humorvee hits a Politically Incorrect IED (Improvised Explosive Device). I’ve never botched a joke, so I wouldn’t know, but recently, Senator John Kerry has come under heavy fire from anti-funny insurgents in the White “Safe” House and members of the Republican Party – probably a Muslim wedding party – for butchering a joke. At least he didn’t butcher innocent civilians in Haditha, Ishaqi, Hamadiya, Mahmudiyah and Mukaradeeb. Jokes are depressing. Kerry’s joke insinuated that someone who did not focus on their studies would find themselves stuck in Iraq.

October proved to be a bad month for jokes, as well as for existing. It was the fourth-bloodiest month in Iraq for coalition forces. The tides of war continue to change and U.S. forces still fail to react. The situation on the ground has become so complicated the only way out may involve senior administration officials tapping into a part of the brain called the cerebral cortex. It is a dangerous region filled with memories of cheerleading, snorting coke and draft dodging. These countermeasures may be necessary, as our control over the region and our own troops has slipped from weak to almost nonexistent.

Since Iraq isn’t funny, and jokes about the situation are in poor taste at best, I’d like to take a moment to do something in good taste. I’d like to congratulate the entire student body of USCB for graduating early. You don’t have to come to class next week. Chancellor Yang has reviewed your midterm and determined you have graduated. Bachelor’s Degree accomplished! Oh wait. This is a joke and it is in very poor taste. It tastes like the blood of the innocent dead. What a horrible flavor. This is worse than the time I tried a Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans and it was Economic Recession-flavored.

Humor is a cover for the tragedy of war. How can we put the pain in a context that we can process? We use white phosphorous bombs that have gigantic explosive diameter. Iraqi civilians are rushed to ramshackle hospitals with most of their flesh blistered off. Our soldiers are leaving as Americans and are coming back as sex offenders and rapists, like the soldiers in Mahmudiyah who slaughtered 14-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza’s family and then gang raped and killed her. And the administration hides behind slogans, like “Stay the course” and “Mission Accomplished.”

I won’t hide. I’d like to know why we should stay the course. I’d like to know what the mission was. I’d like to know what the definition of a terrorist is, and how finding them and killing them will stop their existence. Perhaps I am all alone in left field picking dandelions and making bracelets out of them, saying, “Peace, dude!” Or perhaps we are still fighting a war in Afghanistan that we are losing. Perhaps the war is estimated to cost the U.S. economy $2 trillion dollars – according to a former World Bank economist. Perhaps this war against terror is making more terrorists and the first chemical weapons found in Iraq were homemade by insurgents.

Osama bin Laden, a retiree residing in Crawford, Texas, had this to say in October 2003: “America is mired in the swamps of the Tigris and Euphrates. Bush is, through Iraq and its oil, easy prey. Here is he now, thank God, in an embarrassing situation and here is America today being ruined before the eyes of the whole world.” And Bush, a retiring lame-duck president residing in Crawford, Texas, who, like bin Laden, rarely gives public statements, had this important response to Senator Kerry’s joke: “The senator’s suggestion that the men and women of our military are somehow uneducated is insulting and shameful. The men and women who serve in our all-volunteer armed forces are plenty smart and are serving because they are patriots – and Senator Kerry owes them an apology.” Plenty smart, huh? Kerry was actually attempting to make a joke about the president’s intelligence. I guess he didn’t get the joke.

Daily Nexus columnist Eric Hedlund just served President Bush with the official “not funny” stamp.