April, 1999, World Trade Center building 7, New York, NY. A secret meeting of the Project for a New American Century. In attendance are Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Irv Kristol, and ... others. Cheney, standing at the head of the table and glaring downward, addresses the group:
Cheney: Gentlemen, we stand at a crossroads.
Kristol: (whispering to Feith) I love it when we stand at a crossroads!
Feith: (giggling) Me, too. But I never know what to wear.
Cheney: Do you assholes mind?
Kristol: Sorry, Dick.
Feith: Me, too.
Cheney: Okay. (Clears throat). As I was saying, gentlemen, we stand at a crossroads. As we head into the next millennium, America is the world's preeminent military and economic power, but the ground is not exactly solid beneath us. We are the inheritors of a great historical mantle, gentlemen, the rulers of the world's energy supply and therefore the rulers of world commerce. It is a mantle we inherited from the British, who rose to world power on a bed of coal, who in turn inherited it from the Dutch, who put a chokehold on Europe with their fleet of whaling ships. Our turn began when a discovery was made a little place called Oil Creek near Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859...
Wolfowitz: Dick, you can skip all that stuff. We had our Standard Oil theme party just six months ago. Lynne made the squid ink risotto, don't you remember?