What's keeping me awake.

I'm worried about Manuel Noriega, known to his former countrymen as The Pineapple. He's the Panamanian strongman who came to power in 1981 after Omar Torrijos died in a plane crash that was in no way engineered by George HW Bush.

The fact that Torrijos was popular for building roads, schools and hospitals for the working class campesinos had nothing to do with his death while George HW Bush was vice president. Nothing at all.

Torrijos said, "Having finished with the oligarchy, the Panamanian has his own worth with no importance to his origin, his cradle, or where he was born," and while that had to piss off the well-born Mr. Bush, friend to oligarchs everywhere, that does not mean Bush caused the plane crash that killed Torrijos and brought Noriega to power.

Noriega worked closely with the CIA while Bush was the head of the agency, but sometime in the 80's Bush decided The Pineapple had to go. So George HW Bush sent in the 82nd Airborne and boo-yah, Noriega became just another prisoner in Cellblock Hell.

Now Noriega's sentence has ended. He wants to go back to Panama but Panama says no thanks. France wants him to stand trial on money laundering charges, but Noriega is oddly resistant to spending the remainder of his days as a guest of the French.

What to do? I think I have the answer.

See, as Noriega served out his sentence, Bush's son, George W, became president and had his own strongman problem. The son, ever chafing under the shadow of his more accomplished father, decided he'd do something his Poppy couldn't, and that was to remove Saddam Hussein, another former friend of the family who had fallen into disfavor.

But now there's a problem. The Iraqis have proven to be more restive than the Panamanians. Maybe it's the heat or lack of fruit in their diet. I don't know.

But with Saddam gone, the country has fallen into chaos. What they need is someone who knows how to crack a few heads. Someone with a proven track record, a man who is tanned, rested and ready to take his place on the world stage. A man we know. A man trained by our own School of the Americas in the uncompromising art of guerilla warfare.

Enter Noriega, the answer to our problems in Iraq. Come on, let's give The Pineapple another chance. He couldn't fuck it up any more than it is.

What? So, when you can't sleep, what's on your mind?

And don't look at me like that.