OEN: Uh, why are you looking at me like that. [Looks at notes]. Oh, sorry, you conquered Croesus. Guess you were richer than Croesus.
Cyrus: That’s better. Don’t forget who you’re talking to. And if you correct my “who” with “whom”, I’ll send Queen Tomyris another present. She lives just down the hall with the other 6th century B.C. bigshots like Solon, Buddha, Zarathustra, and Confucius.
OEN: So you were saying?
Cyrus: Follow the money. Iraq is big business. Big banking, big defense contractors. They thrive on disorder. All those billions are recycled back into the Control Economy. Surveillance. Buying up media outlets. Creating think tanks. Funding idiots like Rush Limbaugh. Buying pet writers and scholars to support their policies. Even Bush doesn’t know who he really reports to. Contracts with DynCorp and Blackwater. They’re raising a private mercenary army on U.S. soil and no one seems to give a damn.
OEN: Yes, and if you’ll permit me an editorial comment, it seems like they’ve convinced local police throughout the U.S. that they’re on the front line of the war on terror because more and more, they treat everyone and anyone as a potential terrorist. A simple traffic stop can turn into a Fallujah-style search and destroy!
Cyrus: [Snorts again]. War on terror! There’s no such thing. Iraq is a private war waged by a bunch of chickenhawks who are profiting on the lives – and deaths – of countless Iraqis and tens of thousands of dead and wounded Americans. You think I stayed home and grinned like an idiot while riding my horse on a ranch? Yeah, I had plenty of ranches. But if I made war, I went. Front lines. I went over the wall first when we took Babylon! You saw Intolerance, right? Great movie but Griffith made me out to be an uncivilized maniac. I was much more tolerant than any Babylonian king ever was! But I whipped Bel Shazaar upside his head and back down again! And then partied for three weeks! Man, you don’t forget it once you’ve partied in Babylon! But how do you fight terror? Terror’s not a place, it’s a state of mind. To decide to fight terror you first have to be terrified. Do you think mighty Persia was ever terrified of a few guys hiding out in caves? Or nine missiles? Even if they were just boulders.
OEN: What about 9/11?
Cyrus: You tell me. I don’t know exactly what happened. But if you believe the official story, you have to be smoking hashish. Too many contradictions and I don’t need any Greek logician to tell me that where there’s contradiction, you better look past the smoking gun.
OEN: Our mainstream media has been rather tame. Was it the same in your day?
Cyrus: We did have some embedded reporters. It was a real pain lugging around their stone tablet-oids for them. We called them “in bed with” reporters – heh! you know how crude soldiers’ humor can be. In the build-up to the war the New Tyre Times swallowed everything we said like a…well, like a soldier who’s been lost in the desert swallows the water from a bubbling spring. We used to call the Times the “Phoenecian Blinds” because they pretended not to see what was right in front of their noses! Used to laugh over that one all the time! Then, after Cambyses lost an entire army in the Egyptian desert, the media started questioning some of our conquests. But they never really took a hard look at what was going on behind the scenes. Of course, I was gone by then and Darius the Great took over.
OEN: In his history of the Persian Wars, Herodotus says…
Cyrus: Who?
OEN: Herodotus. Surely you’ve heard of the man known as the Father of History?
Cyrus: Who?
[Suddenly a nurse enters the room. She whispers urgently to yours truly].
Nurse (whispering urgently): You should have been warned. Never mention that name.
