This newspaper clipping was taken a matter of weeks before the incident in Beirut. Ribbon cutting, or hostage situation? You decide.

       Last Friday, a McDonald's in Beirut, Lebanon almost went up in smoke as a stick of TNT exploded in one of the bathrooms. Authorities on the scene found a larger stash of explosives in the parking lot outside, but the detonator apparently failed to operate properly, sparing the lives inside. It's not all roses, though - Instead of death by explosion, those who ate at McDonald's that day will be doomed to a slow death via Big Mac consumption as 2,300 grams of fat squish their way through their arteries, eventually clogging in the left ventricle, at which point doctors say, "They'll die, I guess. I mean, imagine taking one of those cheeseburgers, and putting it in a blender, then injecting that mixture directly into your heart. If you can think through the haze of vomit, you'll realize you're screwed just before the carbohydrate count sends your circulatory system into spasms. The combination of mad pumping and severe clogging will eventually cause the chest to explode in a hideous spray of gore. I don't really like how they taste, either, to be frank."

        In this case, Ronald's food has proven more deadly than a pile of explosives. I don't know if that's shocking to anyone else, but it inspired some research on my part. My independant investigation led to some startling conclusions, and a definite link between Ronald McDonald and Saddam Hussein's dictatorial regime. What follows is a series of revelations that will shake you to the core, then fry that core in a vat of searing grease, wrap it in yellow plastic, and sell it to a mob of underfed children of commercialism at inflated prices:

Revelation #1 - Ronald Has Earned Our Complete Trust.

         It's the perfect crime. Make a fortune off of the gluttony of others, become a household icon for econo-line dining, then stab the world in the back when it's too late. Let's face it, Ronald could fly to certain cities in the U.S., shoot the president in front of a cop, and everyone watching would be too overweight to chase him down. It's taken him countless years to get us to this point, but now he's got us here, and you'd better believe he'll milk it to his grave. Alongside parner in crime Hamburgler (how could we not suspect him from the beginning?), Ronald has used his connections to get him face to face meetings with a variety of celebrities and political figures. More importantly, however, is that his fame has gotten him inside key U.S. facilities, such as his visit to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (left) a few years ago. Coincidence? Maybe.

But maybe not.

Revelation #2 - Ronald Might Be Connected to Recent Terrorist Actions

        Stephen King proved to us long ago that clowns are scary and (more often than not) evil or at least Satanic. Ronald's no exception. Though the Bush adminstration hasn't come and linked Ronald to the 9-11 attack outright, there are statements that seem to imply a logical connection, such as this one, issued from Donald Rumsfeld in early January of 2002: "While we admit that the whereabouts of certain members of Al-Quaeda continues to elude us, we are positive that a small force in Afghanistan is being led by a red-haired clown in a yellow suit. Surveillance seems to indicate that his sleeves are red with white stripes, perhaps to aid in blending in with the rugged jungle terrain."

Revelation #3 - Ronald Has a History of Previous Terrorist Attacks

        Our admittedly illegal sources within the NSA have informed me that in 1992, Ronald and a rag-tag team of spec-ops defectors from various nations around the world seized control of a stadium in Berlin, spawning a tense stand-off that would eventually break out into a full-blown shootout, leaving one of Ronald's henchmen dead, and 37 police in the hospital. Ronald escaped in a hot air balloon, leaving in his wake a trail of ketchup-soaked destruction.

        Ronald resurfaced again in 1994, only to fake his own death by suicide using one of the plastic statues of himself from a McDonald's in Greenville, Kentucky. At the time, police breathed a little more easily, blissful in their ignorance of the powerplay Ronald was preparing to make on the world's stage, refreshingly devoid of balloon animals, but with a disturbingly high body count. That event has yet to happen, though Homeland Security has a special scale used as a McDonald's threat indicator, and recently raised it to "Level Golden Brown," words that spell "terror" in my book.

The Final Revelation- We're All Going To Die, Especially You

        Nobody's taking me seriously. I feel like my journalistic integrity has been slapped in its metaphorical face. I spent yesterday at the gates of the White House, screaming in the direction of the Oval Office that President Bush's pure wish to make the world safe for democracy would be crushed by Ronald's wish to make it dangerous for democracy, and safe for evil. My warnings have fallen on deaf ears.

        I'm sending word to one Obi-Wan Kenobi, perhaps our only hope left.