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Bin Laden, Hussein Safe, But Martha Stewart NabbedBush calls it another "mission accomplished" in the war on terrorism
"It's quite an achievement," said Attorney General John Ashcroft. "We've gone through a drought since we caught Khalid Sheik Muhammad a few months ago, and indicting Martha Stewart is just what the Justice Department needs to get a little of its momentum back." Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was more candid when asked about the indictment. In the spirit of his revealing Vanity Fair interview, where he admitted that weapons of mass destruction were simply a convenient excuse for war, Wolfowitz told the Inquisitor that the Justice Department needed a big bust, and Martha Stewart was the one person they could all agree had become "too big for her britches and was much easier to find than Bin Laden." "We just needed someone who would push our failure to find WMDs in Iraq back to page four or five in the papers," explained Wolfowitz. The criminal charges against Stewart stem from her December 1 sale of 3,828 shares of ImClone stock. The sale, which netted her $228,000 came a day ahead of an adverse ruling from the Food and Drug Administration on ImClone's promising cancer drug. The stock plunged 18% on the news. By trading a day earlier, Stewart saved about $45,000. Cliff Abernathy, one of Ms. Stewart's personal assistants called it "absurd" that Ms. Stewart would risk her fortunes for $45,000. "She can spend that much in a morning on flowers alone and often does," said Mr. Abernathy adding that he thinks the indictment is politically motivated "because Martha supported Democratic candidates and not Republicans."
"It's a different case," said Ashcroft of the criticism. "What Mr. Lay did was simply bad business but Ms. Stewart has clearly broken the law." The biggest surprise came when Ashcroft announced that Martha Stewart was being investigated for aiding the terrorist group Al Qaeda. When pressed for details of the connection, Ashcroft waffled. "We don't have much to connect her with Bin Laden, but we were able to convince the public that Hussein was tied to Al Qaeda without a shred of evidence so I'm sure we'll turn up something," said Ashcroft adding, "her recipes are suspiciously bad, you know. Maybe they're really secret codes intended for the Al Qaedites." President Bush appeared at a local Washington D.C. K-Mart to celebrate the arrest. A storewide "blue light special" greeted the President's arrival, and he spoke to a crowd of seventeen store employees. "The world is safer place tonight," said President Bush to the applause of the K-Mart employees. "Bin Laden may still be on the loose, and Saddam may or may not be alive, but Martha Stewart is on her way to decorating Guantanamo Bay." |
Unable to capture Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, President Bush
announced that his govenment had captured Martha Stewart and indicted
her for something resembling "insider trading."
Indeed, there are critics of the indictment who point out that
former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay is enjoying his retirement after
bilking employees and investors out of billions of dollars while
the Justice Department pursued Martha Stewart for a rather modest sum.