THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. At ease, soldiers. Boy, it sure is great to be back here in Afghanistan. And I'm not just saying in my usual stilted, glaringly insincere monotone. Lynne and I really want to thank you for your hospitality here at Bagram Air Field. What an impressive facility. I can't tell you what a thrill it was to finally see one of my custom-designed, fetish-grade interrogation dungeons in hot and heavy action. And my darling wife Lynne – well she's impressed beyond words with the new "collaborative cleansing" ladies showers.

(Applause.)

We can't get her out of there.

(Laughter.)

No, really.

Get the GODLY New Book!

Anyway, with Christmas and that Jewish candelabra thing coming up any day now, now is the time when those of us in the Executive Branch must submit to that most tedious of political traditions: grinning and bearing it through an interminable 45 minutes spent with the likes of you, standing in a dank, drafty airplane hangar in whatever corner of the world America is currently doing its best to subjugate.

(Applause.)

Thank you. I can't tell you how much that applause means to me. To think that I, a schlumpy millionaire chickenhawk who got five deferments to keep my dimpled keister out of Vietnam, can be worshipped so unconditionally by a crowd of mostly colored folks who had to become volunteer slaves in order to afford community college. It's almost too beautiful to be true.

(Applause.)

There you go again! Be still my beeping bionic heart! (Thumbs up.)

(Applause.)

I realize it might be hard for you folks this holiday season, stuck here so far from home. Because I know that when most of you joined the National Guard, you figured you were signing up for the chance to be in a real-life version of Red Dawn. You had awesome machismo fantasies of valiantly defending the threshold of your exurban hovels with an honest-to-goodness M-16, carving wave after wave of godless Russkies into steaming piles of communist pig slop. And yet here you are, thousands of miles away from your now-barely-protected families, on account of I sent the entire military to the Middle East. Whoever would have though it? I mean other than me, of course.

I also realize how being here in Afghanistan poses its own special challenges – especially to morale. You grunts are working hard here, and yet you know that back home, everyone's talking about Iraq. Iraq is the cool war, the one where the action is. If wars were rock stars, Iraq would be Wayne Newton, and Afghanistan would only be Tony Orlando. And that can be hard – especially knowing that years from now Iraq will also get the giant fancy memorial with thousands and thousands of names carved in it, yet Afghanistan will only garner a crappy little statue with a plaque.

And it is for that reason that today I pledge to do my best to ensure that each and every one of you gets the opportunity to do one or five tours in the Sunni Triangle.

(Applause.)

But please, on the off chance that you don't make it to Iraq for some reason – such as say, dying – I want you to take pride in what you're doing here in Operation... uh... What's this war called again? Operation Raging Camel? Operation Infinitely Understaffed? Operation Don't-Remind-Anyone-This-Is-Where-The-Terrorists-Really-Were?

Well whatever it is, it matters. Because while Afghanistan may not have any oil of its own, now, thanks in part to you, it has a terrific new Halliburton-constructed pipeline. And speaking as a guy who still gets a yearly bonus from that outfit, I can assure that it makes for a very Happy New Year indeed. (Winks.)

(Applause.)

Thank you, and Merry McJesusmas!

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