Iraq Bombings a Bonanza, says Toles

The AP reports, "Two bombings 20 minutes apart killed at least 11 Iraqis yesterday, and the U.S. military announced five more American battle deaths. A U.S. rocket attack on the Shi'ite stronghold of Sadr City killed a woman and enraged Shi'ites across Iraq."

Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles called the event "a bonanza, a gift from the gods" last night at a dinner party. "These deaths will serve my cause of portraying administration officials as heartless and uncaring." When asked how the deaths were related to administration officials, he just shrugged.

The cartoonist, once the author of a humorous editorial cartoon, but now increasingly rabid and unhinged in its tone, threw the dinner party in celebration of what he called "new fodder" for his strip.

Friends say his downward spiral became worse after new revelations showed Toles' portrayal of Ronald Reagan to be based on an erroneous stereotype. "After Reagan's writings showed up, Toles was devastated. Sure, his strips were funny at the time, but now you know that Reagan wasn't a bumbling dunce but was in reality fully informed as any President of his century, once you understood that Reagan thought out the issues in detail and used the dunce image to his advantage ... it's not so funny anymore. Toles felt used."

Toles decided that his strip no longer had to be based on fact or reality. "Success in this business is about acceptance. All he needs to do is to satisfy his extremist fan base. Truth is secondary to the message."

Toles only commented that "I trusted in those who said Reagan was a sleepwalking President, but Reagan's writings, showing a mastery of the hundreds of issues he was facing, made me look like a fool. Who can I trust? Now I invent reality. Those military pigs can kiss my butt." He paused. "This is off the record, right?"