Device Startles Resident, Agents
By Leef Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 16, 2003; Page B05
The contraption was crudely fashioned: an aluminum lobster pot, a couple of C-clamps, some plastic tubing and a bucket adorned with a label from Home Depot. Nevertheless, the device's purpose was pretty clear to the Fairfax County homeowner who last week found it hidden in a shed on his densely wooded property. Law enforcement officers soon confirmed the unlikely find: Someone was making moonshine in the heart of Northern Virginia.
The White House had another explanation, however. "With the discovery of this apparatus, we have finally disproved the nay-sayers who said we would never unearth Saddam's WMD, said White House Spinmeister Karl Rove. "Distilling is a step in the production of certain biochemical compounds that can be used as chemical weapons, and here we have the proof: A mobile chem-bio-weapons lab fully equipped and obviously already used."
Asked how a backyard still in Virginia, within commuting distance of the White House, could be a part of Saddam's WMD infrastructure, Rove sighed. "It was a mobile lab, small enough when disassembled to fit into the trunk of a car. It is undoubtedly being hidden here by a sympathizer. Not to point any fingers, but everybody knows the Virginia Suburbs are crawling with Arab immigrants. Do I have to draw you a picture?"
When reporters appeared to remain skeptical that a backyard moonshine still constituted a WMD lab, Rove shouted "Have any of you ever seen a frat house on Sunday morning? We've been monitoring the single-malt threat for some time now, and it's clearly proliferating." Many in Washington were puzzled by the White House line, although the palpable desperation to find any WMD at all, combined with the First Lady's nervousness about the President and alcohol may hold the answer.
Still, some Washington observes are puzzled. "Backwoods homebrew types are, if anything, Bush supporters," suggested Hempstone Blotterbeak, of the Pew Center for Self-Dosing Research. "Why not go after Botox? It really is a lethal chemical, it's used by many Democrats and urbanites, and in larger quantities its use has been studied as a chemical weapon, including by Iraq."
Nonetheless, homebrew does appear to be the new poster child for WMD. One Army source put it this way "Tell a 20-year NCO to go sniff out some Botox and he won't know where to look. But tell the same guy to go find a hidden still, and he'll home in like a cruise missile. I've never known a career noncom who couldn't locate booze in a nominally dry country."
Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product.
The rest is the fakey part.
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