BREAKING THE SILENCE

Tel Aviv, Israel.

Apparently, Vinny DeShapiro has some friends at Mossad who caught wind of my detainment and were able to negotiate my ‘release’ and transport to Israel.

I will be brief (Any detailed recounting of my last week would cast serious doubts in the minds of you, the dear reader, as to my ability to be objective in my coverage of Senator McCain’s campaign. Let’s just say, to tickle the old imagination, that the Hanoi treatment is decidedly not a simulation and, moreover, a no shit four alarm fire when they forget to have you removed after your appointed stay is quote unquote up and they march you and several other detainees out to a deserted schoolyard at 3am, blind-folded, and line you up against a fence and start executing every one else around you until four Mossad agents show up just in the quote unquote nick of time. Let me fucking tell you, that is the kind of experience you don’t easily forget!). Needless to say, I was not given the opportunity to accompany the Senator in Iraq, Israel, France, or England. I am writing this post on a Blackberry Curve--- my brand new Macbook Air having been bashed over my head on my first day of detainment--- while awaiting my flight from Ben Gurion International Airport to JFK. The predictive texting on this new model seems retrograde at best. I grow tired of typing with my thumbs.

I have called my editor at the Middletown Republican Chassidic Dispatch fourteen times since my ‘liberation.’ There has been no answer and, just now, it occurred to me that I would not even know who to ask for. Imagine that! I almost died covering a candidate for a newspaper where I know exactly no one. Wouldn’t that be rich! I will have to look into that upon my return to the states. There are, in fact, many things I will have to look into when I return to the states.

Wild Bill

Baghdad, Iraq. 9:37 pm. Location Unknown.

My coverage from Baghdad will be limited. Apparently, Senator McCain is fond of what he likes to call the Hanoi treatment. It seems that Mr. McCain believes, rather fervently I might add, that to truly understand what his presidency will mean, to truly inform the masses about the core of his values and ideals, to truly know what McCain is, to feel what McCain feels, to see what McCain sees one must experience three days of starvation, torture, and isolation. I have been told I will rejoin the Senators in Tel Aviv in three days time.

Wild Bill.

Prologue.

I was temping in an insurance office in Hartford when the call came. It was my agent, Vinny DeShapiro:

Bill, I don't know what in hell you did, but some cracker ass Jew paper, pardon my language, but c'mon, some daily called the Middletown Republican Chassidic Dispatch, I shit you not, just called. Their guy, the guy they got covering McCain, Mordecai Weissenberg, his wife caught some weird disease, some unspecified infection, and he decided to bag out. Quit, ya know? So they want you. The pay is shit, but I said my man Bill he works for the art, and maybe a touch more than the crap you're offering. You know how it goes. Anyway, I hear you're filing papers for some actuary, so not like you're going to complain, right? So, you, guy, get on that horse of yours or whatever you're riding these days and stop by the office... No, Bill, you don't need to go to Middletown. Jesus, have you ever been to Middletown? Daughter looked at Wesleyan. Weird place. So you... you get assignments, you file everything electronically. Yes, Bill, I will get print copies for your files. Whaddaya think I am, some sort of schmuck?

And he hung up.

It is 4pm in Baghdad and we just landed. I am waiting for my transport from Baghdad International Airport to the Green Zone where I will join up with Senator McCain for his current congressional trip with Senators Lieberman and Graham.

Hell of a way to start a new gig!

Wild Bill.