At the center of the controversy is the apparent feud between Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Inside sources report that Rumsfeld prefers an American / British coalition of promoters to launch the newly-freed nation’s summer concert season, while Powell insists that the rebuilding of Iraq’s entertainment infrastructure is a global concern, and should be headed up by the United Nations’ Concert Security Council. Meanwhile, on the Kuwait / Iraqi border, hundreds of tour buses for Vans Warped Tour ’03, Lollapalooza ’03 and Ozzfest 2003 patiently await the go signal.

“It’s the classic struggle between the traditional independent promoters and the national concert companies,” says the former commander of USO forces, General Buck Turgidson (retired), in his role as “concert expert” for the Fox News Channel. “The independents want to start on the club level by booking one-off dates for Beck and Wilco in Basra and Baghdad, while the national companies prefer to blanket the country with multiple shows by Lou Reed, Everclear and Third Eye Blind, as well as retain the parking rights for all major amphitheatres in the No-Fly Zones.”

Meanwhile, the citizens of Baghdad, many of whom expected an onsale ticket blitz for some of the summer’s biggest tours, including Pearl Jam and R.E.M. once Hussein was driven from power, have resorted to grabbing clothing, food, televisions and anything else not nailed down as the country experiences its first few days in a post-Saddam world, while Iraq’s immediate neighbors, most notably Syria and Iran, look on with growing apprehension.

“They’ve seen what the coalition forces can do,” says former Stars & Stripes music critic and current MSNBC advisor, Captain Lionel Mandrake (retired), as he stands in front of a 3D graphical display of maps indicating the summer routings for Meat Loaf and Jaguares. “Now they’re worried that their own markets will be passed over in favor of Baghdad dates for Metallica and The Rolling Stones. However, I have it on good authority from my sources within the Bush administration that ‘their time will come.'”

What? The Stones in Tehran? The Summer Sanitarium Tour in Damascus? Is that the next step now that Saddam Hussein has been driven from power?

“Of course, details are still being worked out, but the coalition does have a plan for those two countries”, says Mandrake. “It’s a little something the Bush administration prefers to call ‘Rock & Awe.'”