1 on 1 with President Bashar Assad of Syria*

This interview took place in at a booth in the back of a Damascus Starbuck's.

VOX: Welcome President Assad, I'm glad you could talk to me today.

ASSAD: Anything to get out of the office.

VOX: I gues this whole Lebanon business is pretty stressful.

Assad starts hyperventilating.

VOX: Are you okay?

ASSAD: You had to say that word.

VOX: What word?

ASSAD: Lebanon! I mean sweet mother macree on a crutch, my Dad occupied that country for something like 20 years with no problem he couldn't brutally suppress. I have it for just a few years, and the streets are full of protesters demanding freedom and democracy. I have no friends left.

VOX: Didn't you just sign a pact of friendship with Iran?

ASSAD: That's not all it's cracked up to be. All I need are endorsements from Kim Jong Il and Michael Moore and I'll be the queen bee of the international shit-list. (starts crying) I don't want to be dragged out of a hole like Saddam! I've got a swanky lifestyle to protect. Even France is condemning me! Freaking France! They've never met an anti-American dictator they didn't like, the cheese chomping, wine sucking, surrender monkeys!

VOX: Have a tissue.

Assad blows his nose.

VOX: Even your former ally, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, says you should get out of Lebanon.

ASSAD: If him switching sides ain't a sign that I'm going to be spend what's left of my short sorry-ass life hiding in a cubbyhole than I don't know what is. Say what you want about him, he knows which way the wind is blowing, and it ain't blowing me... so to speak. (sighs wistfully) I could have stayed an opthamologist. I could have just said no to Daddy and I could be running my own Lenscrafters franchise in London. That would have been sweet. Of course Daddy probably would have had me whacked. He could be so stubborn sometimes. Now I'm alone in the world.

VOX: You are not completely without friends in Lebanon. The militant faction Hezbollah held a massive rally to support you.

ASSAD: That was a big help. I saw the pictures, they may have had 500,000 people at that rally, but the pro-democracy folks had between 800,000 to maybe a million people. And I saw the pictures, they had some real babes at those protests. The best Nasrallah could get was a chick who wore a suggestive burqa. I can't compete with that. I have to give up Lebanon, and then I'm screwed. It's straight to the spider hole for me.

VOX: Let's move onto another subject. Did you know that you bear a striking resemblance to the character Odo from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine?

ASSAD: You know King Abdullah of Jordan said the exact same thing to me, and I'm afraid I didn't know what he was talking about. I'm so busy I don't get much chance to watch TV aside from NYPD Blue.

VOX: You know they cancelled that show?

ASSAD: Ah crap, ain't my life just coming up frigging roses!

*interview may not have happened and may have been entirely faked.