Despite tests to its resolve, the United States has remained firm in its Iraq occupation since March of 2003. For more than two years the U.S. has maintained the law in Iraq and the sweet, sweet oil under its ground, even as terrorists and insurgents and, basically, anybody with a firearm has attempted to disrupt the peace forced on the country. Now, with the civilian dead count nearing a total of 25,000, the U.S. can be proud of fulfilling its pledge to stick with Iraq no matter how many are killed.

President Bush restated the U.S. perseverance on Saturday, following a surge in the death toll, a response by anti-U.S. insurgents to last week’s announcement of Iraq’s new transitional government.

“They can bomb us, they can shoot us, they can set our corpses on fire,” said the president, “and we will not be shaken from Iraq until we’ve established a lasting democracy. And when I say ‘us,’ I mean the soldiers and civilians over there.”

More than 300 have been killed in the two-week span following the announcement of the transitional government, which is saddled with making the transition to a comparatively stable Middle Eastern democracy from a valley of death ruled by violent fanatics.

Insiders say the administration has made it a point of pride to survive for so long in a region where we’re clearly not wanted, even as we lose hundreds of our own citizens and thousands of Iraqi residents. The president, we’re told, is optimistic about everything settling down once we reach 25,000 non-military dead, but assures the rest of the world and the remaining Iraqi citizens the U.S. won’t be bullied out even if 250,000 or 25 million are killed during the occupation.

“In a great cowboy movie, the Lone Ranger doesn’t run out of town just because Butch Cavendish comes riding in with his gang,” said the president. “That would make him yella in the eyes of the townspeople. There. I think I’ve adequately explained my foreign policy.”

His cowboy metaphor sufficiently delivered, Bush returned to his domestic efforts of stripping away civil rights, privatizing all social programs, and delivering more ground to the extreme Christian right. The rising death count itself took a backseat to the negligible news of the arrest of a top aide to Al-Zarqawi, the most recent in a long line of Middle Eastern Hitlers, who has among his more devious crimes refused to spell his name with a “u” after “q.”

While some claim Al-Zarqawi, once arrested, will only be replaced with another anti-American despot in a region increasingly anti-American in its sentiment, others tell them to shut up and stop spoiling our fun. With the maximum civilian death toll standing around 24,000 right now, including Iraqi police and non-military, as well as foreign and American contractors, the administration is still persistent that 25,000 dead will be the turning point everyone’s waiting for. Scotlar Hughes, a political science professor at Bolchek University, Ames, Iowa, believed the president would be proven right in his plan to outlast the opposition in Iraq.

“Consider it a game of chicken,” said Prof. Hughes, conducting a phone interview with this poor son of a bitch reporter, still stationed in Fallujah. “It’s a contest of wills right now between the president and the nameless mass of anti-American insurgents still residing in and around Iraq. Only, the president has nothing to lose—he’s not even putting his own neck on the line, but the neck of soldiers and civilians in the area. He’s already won re-election and Americans have so tuned out of politics the notion of lawmakers winning opposition against him is remote. What is he really risking? Sure, he may go down in history books as the worst president during his own lifespan, but this president doesn’t read anyway. And as for the fanatics… how many of them can there be in Iraq anyway?”