US Deploys Rodney King To Quell Looting In Baghdad

BAGHDAD (CT) - As American forces pour into Baghdad to secure Iraq's capital city, the Pentagon has deployed Rodney King to rein in the now-widespread looting by Iraqi civilians and American soldiers. "Mr. King can get the job done; he is proof that we want to restore order to Baghdad,"Â? General Tommy Franks told reporters at his latest briefing. Franks personally asked that King be brought to Iraq. King is best known as the victim of a brutal beating by four Los Angeles police officers. He stepped back into the public eye after the officers were cleared of all criminal charges, asking for an end to violent riots and tearfully adding, "Can't we all just get along?" In his present capacity as director of the Rodney King Center for All of Us Just Getting Along, King has been deployed both by the military and by private organizations to help in the process of just getting along, recently appearing at anti-globalization protests in Seattle and oil workers' strikes in Venezuela. According to scholars King was also a "vital key to just getting along"Â? as peaceful citizen protests drove Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic from power, and he was rumored to have cemented the strike-averting labor agreement between Major League Baseball and its players' union. King appeared on Iraqi television last night, where he asked that Iraqis all just get along, but reaction among Baghdad's citizens was mixed as he gave his message only in English. Patrons of the bar formerly known as Club Mighty Saddam Can Strike Down Your Sons watched the speech and immediately assumed King was Iraq's new American-backed dictator. General Franks said he was "confident that King's presence will be helpful"Â? and denied that King would serve as a spokesman for his new line of hot dogs, General Tommy's Franks.