In the midst of the winter of twenty-oh-two
All the people were wondering if it was not true
That in Africa you could get fresh yellowcake
Which Saddam Hussein really needed to make
His own personal, bright, shiny, new atom bomb
That he'd gladly drop here without bother or qualm,
On us decent and innocent, mild-mannered folk
In a big mushroom cloud, and we'd go up in smoke.
So the Agency sent out a much trusted fellow
On a quest for a cake that was fresh, hot and yellow.
Joseph Wilson, his name, and when Wilson returned
He told his superiors they had been burned.
There wasn't a simmering hot yellowcake
The whole blasted thing was just one giant fake.
Not a trace or an atom of fresh yellowcake,
Of uranium nary a shred or a flake.
A few months along in a televised speech
Our wartime commander had started to preach
That Saddam Hussein had now picked up this stuff
And he'd definitely positively gotten enough
To blow up New York and Los Angeles too
And what in the heck were good folks gonna do?
And think what great mischief this Saddam could make,
With a pound and a quarter of hot yellowcake.
And so Bush bombed Saddam into next Ramadan
Drank a cup of iced coffee with Kofi Annan
Things were just getting good when the mobile phone rang
"Get a Times," said Karl Rove, "It's Joe Wilson. He sang."
And our trusted commander went all cherry red,
And then recklessly shaking his coif-tousled head,
He resolved then and there to take Joe Wilson out,
And that's what this ballad is really about.
What is the best way to injure a fellow?
Stomp on his toe, that will make a man bellow.
But if your objective is spoiling his life,
Do something real nasty to threaten his wife.
So Bush gave an order to his loyal ranger
That would place the guy's spouse in incredible danger.
The source never said Wilson's wife's maiden name
But everyone guessed it was Valerie Plame.
Val must have known that they'd set her to burn,
When her hubby went public with his grave concern,
That George Bush was peddling ungrounded fear
Of vague, nameless threats from far off and from here.
But a very tough spy proved this Valerie Plame,
As she staked her young life in a grim hardball game,
And courageously took one for all of the team
Just to rouse us all up from a dangerous dream.
This Plame's sworn to silence, she can't tell her story,
And all of her life she'll be liable to worry
So give her due credit, Joe Wilson's brave wife
For us she endangered her job and her life.
Someday we will put her betrayers to rights.
In a cell they will spend all their days and their nights:
Secure was this agent till they spoke her name,
They must pay for the outing of Valerie Plame.
She'd be safe now if we'd never found out her name,
And there'd not be a ballad of Valerie Plame.
