Hey Mama, git me my waders and a shovel
'Cause it sure is getting deep in here. Subtitled, A Little Barrel Fishing.

This little saga gets stupider and stupider, especially in light of the kidnapping of reporter Daniel Pearl. Clark, baby, this crap is tiresome and makes a mockery of everything you claim to support--

From Huntsville Times political editor John Anderson's column in today's paper, the lede:

Asking Clark Bowers about his trip to Afghanistan is like plopping a big pot of pinto beans on the stove, turning the switch on high, and tooling over to the neighbor's to watch the Super Bowl. Expect stuff to boil out all over the place.

Amen.

"I am hyperactive and very analytic," Bowers conceded during one of several interviews this week, interviews that veered into side trips to discuss Greek philosophy, British literature, and the herding habits of the national media. "It's not a blessing. It's my Achilles' heel."

Poor guy. First he was hyperbolic, now he's hyperactive. And then there's that danged heel thing. You know, Clark, my Achilles' heel is trying to give people the benefit of the doubt when I think they might be in trouble, then getting royally chapped when it becomes apparent that they circumvented my B.S. detector.

He also referred frequently to other international adventures that he said have included single-handedly arranging the delivery of a half-million care packages to American soldiers fighting the Gulf War and monitoring an election in Angola.

Now one thing that must be said here, is that Clark Bowers has not made the claim that he helped Al Gore invent the Internet. Yet.

Bowers knows that those and numerous other claims on his extensive resume, some as yet unconfirmed, have a naturally skeptical media doubting his trip to Afghanistan ever happened. Bowers insists he's ready to take on all doubters later this week with a detailed report verifying his resume claims.

That promises to be a great read!

But for now, Bowers has agreed to tell the story people ranging from the U.S. State Department to the local FBI to members of the international media want to hear.

Mr. Bowers, the story I most want to hear is why you felt compelled to move to Alabama--have we not been punished enough? For my part, I would much rather have the national media interview lard-assed, gap-toothed survivors of a trailer park tornado than to have to endure this doof.

From the start of his long narrative, Bowers wants to make one thing clear: "I don't in any way think I'm a public hero."

Translation="I don't think I'm a public hero--darn it, I KNOW IT!"

Clark determines to do his part after September and travels to Rome (that's in Italy, you know!) several times to meet with the Afghan king in exile.

It was during that trip and a second one in early November that Bowers became a confidante of the elderly king and his public representative, his grandson Prince Mostafa. They agreed that Bowers might get vital information back to the king about the circumstances in southern Afghanistan during a time the American government was focusing almost exclusively on the northern alliance to take out the Taliban. So between the two trips to Rome, Bowers undertook a "first-person fact-finding trip'' into southern Afghanistan as America prepared to wage its battle in the north.

Gosh, this sounds real excitin', don't it! Real James Bond kind of stuff!

He immediately met anti-Taliban clan leaders in the south perplexed that America seemed bent on fighting its war against the Taliban only with the Russian-supported northern alliance. "All you heard every hour and every day" from Washington was "northern alliance," Bowers said, even though the alliance contained almost no representatives of the Pashtuns, the largest ethnic bloc in Afghanistan, concentrated in the southern province of Kandahar. "There were no CIA guys, nobody doing anything in the south," Bowers said.

You see there! Just like ol' James Bond--ain't no CIA nowhere, but our boy Clark's on the ground, large and in charge! What a tiger!

He soon met Pashtun leader Al-Haj Gul Agha Shirzai, who would soon surprise Washington with his military prowess in taking Kandahar city. [...] Bowers and the powerful warlord became friends - Shirzai nicknamed Bowers "Tiger." Through him, Bowers said, he recorded on video two pivotal meetings of "all the key (anti-Taliban) leaders in that part of the world."

Clark the Tiger! Tigernator! Tigerrrrrrrr! Those wacky, wacky warlords and their funny nicknames! And that video! WOW! I see a new TV show developing out of this--we can even call it "Those Wacky Warlords." And it'll have guys in mud huts and they'll complain about stuff and they'll roll their eyes when the clumsy comic-relief-guy trips while carrying a stack of land mines and there will be all sorts of hijinx when they have to hire a new secretary and it's a woman, but it's okay because she wears a burqa by choice, but then we find out that it's really Clark dressed in drag and they all laugh and play buzkashi.

"I found myself with such unique, ridiculous access through either my stupidity or courage," Bowers said. "I was the only non-Afghan in the room."

I'm sure it was through your courage, o mighty Amreekan Tiger. But did you notice that whenever you turned around, people guiltily stopped talking and pointing and laughing?

Bowers said he also met a high-ranking mullah, or Islamic religious leader, thought to be a Taliban ally, who gave him a letter to take back to the king in Rome. Although he hasn't had the letter translated, Bowers said, an interpreter told him the mullah wrote that "he would fight for the king" under certain conditions. The mullah, through the interpreter, told Bowers: "I am entrusting this with your life. Destroy it if you are captured."

"No one must know that our beloved king and I are swapping term papers! But it must be done, praise Allah, for Mullah Omar has my back like, LITERALLY against the wall this term, and His Highness got a 93 on his last one about Columbus, and I have already done him the favor of providing the last lab assignment! Go, Clark, go! Fly like the djin!"

Bowers rushed back to Rome to the king. He also went to the U.S. Embassy there because "(Vice President Dick) Cheney or (President George) Bush needed to know" about the undeveloped anti-Taliban potential in the South. There Bowers said he met with the embassy's Army and Air Force attaches. "I was trying my hardest to give them a heads up," Bowers said.

"Must...get...information...to...my...best...friend...the...President...!"

"I had my camera. They believed everything I said."

Uh-huh. Did you happen to have another camera to see their reaction when you left the room?

Prince Mostafa even asked his advice on what to tell a CNN correspondent about the attempts at building a new Afghan government, and the king asked him to tell a waiting George Stephanopoulos with ABC News he'd be 20 minutes late for a scheduled interview.

Stephanopoulos, upon Bowers' words, immediately asked that Bowers go get him a cup of coffee and a magazine or something.

"I got to know all the king's people," Bowers said.

Wow! Even Colonel Tom? Did you see Priscilla anywhere?

Bowers said he was amazed despite the pain how his mind and body struggled to keep from showing fear and anguish. "It was sort of like a third-person (experience). It was like it was not happening to you."

Hmmm.

Bowers credits his refusal to cry out to the area's culture, which respects stoicism in the face of great danger. He thinks his response to the torture was part of the reason his captors decided to free him.

"This stoic CIA agent mocks us with his hardiness! Satan has bestowed a great blessing on him to withstand such trials--the fruits of such interrogation rot on the ground before us. By Allah it appears that we have no choice but to allow this Tiger of the Khyber Pass to return to the land of perdition and to his wives, lovely actress Morgan Fairchild and supermodel Kathy Ireland."

He said he endured the torture, and mock executions with a pistol to his head, by thinking of favorite songs, such as "God Bless America," "Amazing Grace," the Survivors' "Man Against the World," and George Michael's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me."

Wake me up, before you go-go!

Bowers suspects a main reason his captors finally released him was because they feared an approaching anti-Taliban group would be angry to find a dead American in their group.

I think they feared you would start singing George Michael songs, instead of just thinking about them.

After his release somewhere in the vicinity of Kandahar province, Bowers went to see Shirzai, who by now had become the province's post-Taliban governor. Shirzai interrupted a meeting of his Cabinet when Bowers arrived for a joyful reunion. "He hugged me," Bowers said.

"You've just been kidnapped and tortured--Hey Clark, where ya gonna go?" "I'm going to go to ShirzaiLand!" Because, even though these 23 burns on my arms are painful and oozing, I feel a hospital trip would unnecessarily delay me in my quest to hug a warlord every day.

And so, Bowers ends his tale where he started it: He wants no public kudos, no money-making appearances or book deals, no medals for following to Afghanistan the sentiments of a favorite poem he recited Tuesday night:

"I am only one, but I am one.

"I can't do everything, but I can do something.

. . . And that which I should, by the Grace of God I shall do."

Man, I see a tidal wave of glurge headed to an inbox near you! "Hello, you don't know me, but my name is Clark, the Tiger of Afghanistan. I don't want public kudos, or to make money by appearing in public or writing a book, and I don't want a medal for the sacrifices I have made in defense of our beloved Homeland. But I do want to make sure that should I ever be kidnapped from my home in Harvest by rogue elements of the Iraqi secret service or members of al-Qaida, that my family's needs will be taken care of..."

So anyway, here ends yet another episode of Thrillseeker Follies. It's worth remembering that Mr. Bowers has occasionally claimed the honorific "Doctor." Around these parts, Ph.D. means Piled Higher and Deeper.
posted by Terry at 10:22:00 AM