Get your program...you can't tell the Arabs without a program

I reckon by now you've heard that the Dubai Ports deal fell through. President Bush was deeply embarrassed among his many Arab friends. Although I always thought that in the War on Terrorism, Arabs were not our first choice of ally, it turns out that all Arabs are not the same.

For instance, according to President Bush, the United Arab Emirates are folks we can trust. Although the U.A.E. provided banking services to al Qaeda for the purposes of the 9/11 attacks, it turns out that that was strictly business and those particular Arabs don't hate Americans personally like let's say Iranians (who are actually not Arabs but Persians, as though that makes a difference).

Then there's Saudi Arabia. According to President Bush, the 15 Saudi hijackers who flew jets into the World Trade Center and Pentagon were actually aberrations. As the President said, "You don't want to tar an entire nation just because of a few bad seeds." So Saudi Arabia remains among America's truest friends.

Iraq, on the other hand, had long had bad thoughts about the United States. Those Iraqis like Saddam Hussein were always saying war-like things. Although no Iraqi participated in the 9/11 incident, American intelligence learned that many Iraqis wished that they had. What else could America do but attack Iraq — a known potential enemy.

Anyway, President Bush has been feeling awfully bad about the way the United States Congress including Republicans treated our friendly Arabs. And he doesn't want to see that it happen again.

So the President has hired a major public relations company, Hally Burton & Associates, to develop a directory or "program" that will differentiate for Americans the Arabs we like and those we don't.

The program will list Arabs by country, region, town and religion making it easy for Americans to know who to go into business with and who not.

For instance, we now like Shiites living north of Baghdad but we don't like Shiites living in Iran unless they are students attending specific universities in Tehran.

Basically, we don't like any Palestinians but if we have to deal with them, we'll only talk to Fatah and not Hamas.

We don't like anyone in Syria but like most Arabs in Jordan unless they are related to some fellow named Zarqawi.

Anyway, there are about 170 million Arabs in the Middle East and by the time the directory is completed, we should know how every single one of them stands on whether they like Americans or not.