Campaign Speech for Iraqi Parliament/Last Will & Testament

As a child, I was an election junkie. No, I don't mean that I hung outside polling places looking to score. I mean I would run for any office potentially available to me. Second grade class president? Check. Treasurer of Welch Valley Middle School. Uh-huh. President of my 9th & 10th grade class, followed by a school-wide student body presidential bid in 11th grade? Yes, yes, and yes. And let's not even get into the whole extra-curricular activities elections... Suffice to say I even ran to be captain of my running teams.

So it's not without a real understanding of the idealism involved in elections--coupled with the drive for glory--that I think is what pushes people to run for office. But even though I know someone has to run for office in Iraq these days if the country is to take its next great leap forward, I think the people who choose to campaign are fucking nuts. Or suicidal. And most likely both.

Now as much as I'd like to believe I won those elections based on my looks, I think it was the fact that I could deliver a speech unlike any other obnoxious/self-aggrandizing teen in suburban Philadelphia. So I've been trying to imagine a stump speech that a candidate for election in Iraq might give, and I think this one just might do the trick:

Friends, countrymen and people who want to kill me, lend me your ears. NO! I do not mean this literally. I am running for the Iraqi Parliament because I deeply feel it time to stand up to totalitarian rule! (And because I hate my family.) I want to be one of the next rulers of this country because I believe I can make a difference in your lives -- I will restore dignity, I will push for human rights, I will make sure you no longer live in fear. (And because my wife kicked me out of the house, and I'm couch surfing at my friends place right now. Which suuuucks!) It is time that our basic needs as a people are met and that we move forward not backward into the new millennium. (And because facial hair isn't very flattering on me.) I will be a tireless, relentless crusader for good. (It's hard to sleep when bombs keep going off, no? I mean at first it kind of feels like those rocking "Magic Fingers" beds like the ones they have in Atlantic City, but the novelty wears off pretty quickly.) Though I intend to run this government in as secular a fashion as I can, you should have faith that I will stand up to the terrorists trying to keep us down. I will improve our lives and I will not stop until there is couscous in every tagine, or until I'm assassinated when I step down from this dais, whichever comes fir--