Pentagon Catches Flak for New Bomb
Reference to new 21,000 pound bomb as 'Mother of All Bombs' goes over
like a lead balloon with activist women
Washington, DC, March 12 --
In a flashy debut for its biggest non-nuclear bomb,
the Air Force on Tuesday dropped a 21,000-pound behemoth onto a test range in
Florida, hoping the test would rattle nerves in Iraq as well.
US tests their biggest-ever conventional (non-nuclear) bomb at Florida Air
Base. Code-named MOAB (for Mother of All Bombs), this 21,000-pound monster
eclipses by tons the previous record holder, the Daisy Cutter which was
dropped on Afghanistan and used extensively in Vietnam. Capable of devastating three square miles with the
fury of its blast, the existence of the weapon was announced on what appears
to be the eve of President Bush's attack on Iraq.
The new ordinance, giddily referred to as 'Mother of All Bombs'
Unexpectedly, the announcement spurred picketing on the home front. District riot
police and the Secret Service were called to Lafayette Square this morning as
hundreds of mothers gathered to protest the bomb's nomenclature. Assembling
in the gray dawn, angry mothers denounced the Air Force for insensitivity,
male chauvinist piggery, appalling taste and complete failure to grasp the
irony of their misnomer.
Asked why she was protesting, one mother with a tot in a back pack and waving
a sign reading "Bomb THIS!" said, "Mothers are about creation, not
destruction! Let those boys fly around bombing things. Sexist pigs." A
friend striding alongside her asked, "Did those guys even look at that thing?
What were they thinking? They've got their egos in their pants, I'd say.
Just look at that pro-jec-tile object. What do they mean, 'mother'?"
Another woman bemoaned the change in shape and color of the bomb. "Now that old daisycutter bomb, that sure looked like a woman - plump, rotund and nearly square," she said. "But look at that horrible monstrosity they replaced the old 'Daisy' with -
it looks like a man in a yellow Speedo outfit - ugly."
Representatives from NOW (the National Organization of Women) set up a
display comparing the familiar symbols for male and female. "As if we'd need
to draw a picture for you," groused a NOW volunteer. "Look, see the little
cross on the female symbol? And the pointy arrow on the male symbol? Which
most closely resembles their stupid bomb?" She waved a photograph showing the
long cylinder of the bomb, shouting, "Anybody see anything maternal about
this - when you behold this bomb, do you think male or female?"
At his daily press briefing, Ari Fleischer said that this was a tempest in a
teapot. In his personal opinion, NOW, the WCTU, the Ladies Garment Workers
Union, MADD, the League of Women Voters, the Men's Auxiliary from the Museum
for Women in the Arts, Phyllis Shaffley (who, in an apparent about-face, had
joined the protesters) and all the other acronyms should stick to their
knitting.
He added that as another big plus, the President felt the MOAB moniker had a nice
Biblical ring to it. "He feels that it strikes exactly the right tone as a
name for something that he planned to virtually personally drop down Saddam's
windpipe. In a follow-up Fleischer was asked if he was quoting the President
exactly or paraphrasing. Fleischer replied that it was the gist of the
President's thinking on the subject.
A questioner asked Fleischer if the President knew MOAB stood for Mother of
All Bombs. Fleischer said that was a Mother of a Question and he would get
back with an answer some time. Meanwhile, he pointed out, "folks in Utah are happy to hear that our biggest bomb has the same name as one of their finest towns."
The female White Houses journalists hurled epithets, Palm Pilots and cell
phones at Fleischer and stormed out of the Briefing Room and stalked across
the street to join the pickets.
Staff writer LD Dana and researcher PW Gummibear collaborated on this article.
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