Recently, a bunch of Wesleyan students trekked down to Washington D.C in order to protest the ever-continuing war in Iraq. In doing so, they joined a lot of others. Unfortunately, nobody with war-ending powers responds to bleeding hearts (both in protest and in combat). This is why we must all be thankful for Mrs. Libby R. Tee’s third grade class in New Haven.

Wanting Iraq to fulfill the namesake of her own Connecticut city, Mrs. Tee instructed her little tikes to make “Hearts for Freedom (and Valentine’s Day).” The children cut out shapes from pink and red construction paper and labeled them for different virtues, like “hope not dope” and “sunny Sunnis” and “gorillas not guerillas” and stuff like that. Hearts cut from purple paper were labeled “be proud of farts, not purple hearts!”

The children then packaged their hearts in a large manila envelope and mailed them to the White House. Here they were received by somebody who advises the President and coaches him with foreign policy and pretzel-eating.

Finally, Bush pulled some strings (first his shoelaces, which caused some difficulty) and promptly arranged for the American presence to be taken out of Iraq. The next day, he declared that “Oil Sucks.” Bush then single-handedly ended sectarian violence in Iraq and used strength and money of epic proportions to virtually wipe out AIDS in all of Africa. When asked for a motive, Bush responded that he wanted to further the efforts towards world peace solely in honor of Valentine’s Day, the best cause that he could pinpoint.

In similar war-related news, a World War Two veteran in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was reported tomorrow to have given his wife of 60 years a blank Hallmark card tied with a war medal, a map of Germany, a picture of a swastika crossed out violently in black pen, and some smiley-face stickers. Apparently, our lovable vet had gotten V-Day confused with V-E Day. His wife was very understanding to his mistake; just last Christmas, she had given her husband a Father’s Day card, confusing the legacy of his fatherhood of their two children with that of Jesus Christ and the Christian religion.