DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE MEMBERS DISCUSS THE PARTY’S PLAN TO RETIRE MOST WEAPONS SYSTEMS IN FAVOR OF A “FASTER, SIMPLER, MORE CHEWABLE” OPTION OF BRINGING NEW ARMS TO THE BATTLEFRONT.

Saying that the military’s weapons had become “too expensive and too lethal,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-General Motors) will hold hearings next week on retiring most of the military’s current weapons and outsourcing the construction of their replacements to Senegal:

Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools to hunt small mammals—the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans.

The multistep spearmaking practice, documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees’ trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of years ago.

The landmark observation also supports the long-debated proposition that females—the main makers and users of spears among the Senegalese chimps—tend to be the innovators and creative problem solvers in primate culture.

Levin said that he and other Democratic members were especially interested in studying the new “manufacturing process” for the weapons that promises to save billions and billions of dollars:

The chimps were repeatedly seen using their hands and teeth to tear the side branches off long straight sticks and peeling back the bark and sharpening one end of the sticks with their teeth, the researchers report in Thursday’s online issue of the journal Current Biology. Then, grasping the weapon in a “power grip,” they jabbed into tree-branch hollows where Bush babies — small monkey-like mammals — sleep during the day.

One Senator who asked to be quoted anonymously (for obvious reasons) said another factor in favor of taking contracts away from such defense giants as General Dynamics, Raytheon, and United Technologies was the willingness of the newcomers to test the weapons on “Bush’s babies” – something that would please the online Democratic party activists who refer to themselves as “netroots.”

“One sure way to please the netroots and get them behind this proposal is to get the Bush babies involved in the war,” he said. “And if they happen to get in the way of a hungry arms tester, well…C’est La Guerre!

Claiming that the Senegalese firm would be able to produce weapons “faster, cheaper, and with a lot less backtalk than Lockheed gives us,” Senator Levin also praised the design of the weapons both for their simplicity and the fact that using the arms in combat will dramatically reduce civilian casualties.

“This really is a brilliant design,” he said. “It guarantees many fewer civilian casualties while generating casualties right where they belong – on the men and women in our military who were too stupid to get a job in the private sector in the first place.”

The Carnegie Endowment for Peace agreed, saying in a statement that the new weapons “represent a qualitative step in the right direction for reducing casualties in war.”

Another Committee member, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Negligent Homicide) pointed out that the way that contract payments for the arms would be made could fulfill a dual use purpose.

“The bananas, fruits, and nuts that we use to pay for these new super weapons could also be distributed to the poor in this country,” he said. “This new ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ could also become ‘The Fruitbasket of Democracy.”

National Organization for Women (NOW) President Kim Gandy also issued a statement congratulating the Senate on recognizing the unique role of females in both the invention and manufacture of these new weapons:

Adrienne Zihlman, an anthropologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said the work supports other evidence that female chimps are more likely than males to use tools, are more proficient at it and are crucial to passing that cultural knowledge to others.

“Females are the teachers,” Zihlman said, noting that juvenile chimps in Senegal were repeatedly seen watching their mothers make and hunt with spears.

Females “are efficient and innovative, they are problem solvers, they are curious,” Zihlman said. And that makes sense, she added.

Gandy said she was “pleased” to see women in combat and hoped that the military would change their mind and allow American females, armed with “weapons made by their sisters in Senegal,” to become part of combat teams throughout the military.

Note: This article is a parody/satire. It is not meant to be taken seriously.

UPDATE

A slightly different take - from the left.

Mark Coffey weighs in on the Joe Wilson angle.