The Last Temptation of Osama bin Laden
We interrupt our regularly scheduled program of travel narratives to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. At twenty minutes before eight, central time, un-named governmental sources in Washington commented that the initial reports announcing the demise of terrorist Osama Bin Laden were part of a misinformation campaign correct designed to grant intelligence agencies with sufficient time to interrogate the prisoner.
Day I
Behind the fourteen foot, razor sharp barbed wire, behind walls six-feet thick, beyond the guard towers, sits an ominous ADX Super-max Prison in Florence, Colorado. There is no color; it is all cold, gray stainless-steel. It is here where the most dangerous criminals of our age live out their days. The Super-max holds the Unibomber Ted Kaczynski, The Shoe Bomber Richard Reid, Drug Kingpin Carlos Lehder, Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, the Son of Sam Killer David Berkowitz, among others. The ADX prisoners are held in solitary confinement around the clock in cells that resemble bank vaults. Once a day they are led out in single file so they can exercise for twenty six minutes, and they are sent back to their cells to eat a miserable plate of pork and beans with a single slice of spongy white bread. There is no cable TV, and the only radio station they listen to plays Rush Limbaugh and country music twenty-four hours a day. In the same facility, six hundred feet underground, is an interrogation room that holds Osama Bin Laden, the terrorist that provoked mass hysteria in the United States in the wake of the 9-11 attacks.
The conference room on Interrogation Block C was host to a meeting of five individuals that represented America’s most powerful law enforcement agencies: the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the IRS, and NYPD. Washington had sent it point man to discuss how the prisoner was going to be interrogated. Like most politicians, he chose his words carefully, using the word “interview” in place of “interrogation.” Everyone in the room knew the rules: keep the higher-ups out of the dirty work so they could argue “plausible deniability” if it ever came out in a Senate Subcommittee hearing. The Washington representative was a graduate from the prestigious Georgetown School of International Law and secretly deplored having to work with the homophobe super-patriot types. He had actually believed in the rule of law before he started working in and around the Beltway, but he discovered that the best way to move up was go along with the flow. He turned over the assignment to the team leader who sat just to his left. He wanted nothing more than to turn the assignment and get back to Alexandria.
While the team reviewed the files confiscated in the Abbottabad raid, they ate jelly donuts and drank government issued coffee. To anyone else, they were just four geeks with crew cuts having their breakfast. They had black rim glasses, high-water slacks, white short-sleeve shirts, and wore wingtip shoes. The team leader was a certified Oliver North type, who broke teachers unions in his civilian job. He was ex-Blackwater who spoke of the glory days of laying down a fusillade of suppressive fire and concussion grenades, busting through doors and tagging and bagging Iraqui kids who had been impressed into duty driving out the infidels. For him, the country was being overrun by illegal immigrants from Mexico and the best way to keep them south of the border was run round the clock Blackhawk patrols along the border, “and some som-bitch tries to cross, light ’em up with the twin 50 calibers.” The IRS guy was a desk-jockey who was there to follow the trail of money. The cop had had worked Mafia cases in Brooklyn and the Bronx for 20 years, and the fourth was really a lesbian that got into the FBI because she liked masculine-looking shoes.
Once the NSA bureaucrat left the room, the CIA team leader took charge. As he sauntered around the room, holding a football, and said, “Now that the Mamby-Pamby pencil neck is out-the-way we can get down to bidness.” He opened the sealed orders and read them aloud. It was clear that the government was up-shit-creek again, and someone had to take out the trash. The administration needed answers to some tough questions before a slew of “them jackass senators” decided to hold public hearings. It was old news: a former US protégé runs amok and bites the hand that once feeds him. The first one to turn was General “Ole-Pineapple Face” Manuel Noriega, then it was Saddam “Don’t Call Me Sodom” Hussein, and finally it was old Bin Laden himself. The higher-ups figured that the Afghan Hamid Karzai would be the next turn coat. According to those in the know, that rat-bastard was capable of jumping in bed with the Taliban to stay in power.
The team needed to know who else was betraying the government. The photographs taken in the search and seizure revealed that Bin Laden had the house in Abbottabad, and luxury condos in Islamabad and Karachi. These places were stocked full of frozen lamb dinners, had big screen TVs, cable, internet and subscriptions to Time and Newsweek. Someone was supporting Bin Laden and his band of religious nut-bags, and, at the same time, screwing the U.S. for millions of dollars in military support and economic aid. Were the Saudis playing both sides against the middle? Was it the Pakistanis? Or, were they both in on the scam?
“Hot damn!—said the Texan–now it’s time to show them A-rabs how it’s done. We’re gunna spike this here football!”
The Texan announced that “even though the President told the world that we was ‘bringing in Osama alive’ as part of due process, them sniveling reporters is gone now. So, things is gunna get a little messy, cause the gloves is coming off.” Thus far, the team had only engaged in low-level, stress-inducing psychological warfare to break through the prisoner’s rough exterior. The avoided tactics like water-boarding and went right for the jugular. He added, “All of Bin Laden’s meals is being Fed-Ex-ed in from the Cracker Barrel in Colorado Springs. That ole Muslim’s been eating bacon, sausage, and ham gravy for pert near 72 hours. I think he’s ready to crack!” said the Texan. “Even them freedom fries he ate yesterday was cooked in pork-fat shortening. He’ll either fatten up like a Midwesterner, or he’ll sing like a bird.”
The lesbian from the FBI asked, “Does the Geneva Convention mention anything about lard and pork products?”
The Texan responded, “Aw, hell, no. Not a damn thing! I’d love to see those ass-wipes in the Senate Subcommittee bust our balls on this one. They don’t know sheet.”
The New York cop added, “Yo, like wees can tell ‘um we ain’t runnin no hotel here, ah!”
The accountant from the IRS looked incredulous. He asked, “Do you really think he’ll cave in? He thinks that God is on his side.”
Pointing the football at the bean counter like six-shooter, the Texan responded, “Aw, fuck him! That som-bitch’ll snap like a rubber band. An, iffen he don’t, why, hell, we’ll up and hog tie ‘im and drag his ass through Wal-Mart behind a horse. He’ll be praying to Sam Walton five times a day before this is over!”
Bin Laden had been strapped to a straight backed chair in the interrogation room: he was dressed in a bright-orange jumpsuit, matching flip-flops, his hands were cuffed at his sides, and his legs were immobilized with leg manacles. The interrogation team sat in the conference room drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes for another hour, and talking about pro-football. The team leader finally said, “It’s about time to get ‘er going.” After a quick huddle, the four walked down to the interrogation room, and took their positions.
After they settled in, the Texan was the first to speak, “Damnation. You’re gunna tell us what we wants to know, Bin Laden. This can go two ways: hard are soft. Which way you want it?”
Bin Laden opened his eyes, and said, “’‘As-Salam Alaikum’ to my brothers in faith, and ‘Allahu Akbar’. Bin Laden speaks these worrds unto you to striike fear into the hearrts of the non-believerrs.”
The Texan smiled and said, “Well, we ain’t looking for the kind of bullshit you put on ur Facebook, Sparky. But what we want is real information. Now, out with it! Which one of them there sons-of-bitches was keeping up to your eyeballs in falafel? Was it the Pakistanis or the Saudis, or both?
The brrotherrs of Bin Laden are everrrywherrre. By Islamic Law they must prrovide me with sanctuary when I rrequest it of them. They are bound by faith. You are all infidels and I must vanquish you, and take revenge with my jihad!
Hot damn! You sure know how to trill your Rs. Yeah, we’re infidels. An, let me tell you somethin. For the last several days you been eating infidel food. We fixed your ass! Everythin you been eating has been made with port fat. Bin Laden, you’ve been livin high-on-the-hog!
Osama sat quietly for several moments while his mind registered the thought. He then said, “I’ll keell you!”
Not iffen that cholesterol don’t kill me first! Heh, heh!
Upon discovering that he had deeply and passionately, enjoyed eating bacon and sausage, Bin Laden began to purge his body of the unholy animal’s flesh by vomiting. After several minutes of eye-bulging gagging and stomach-churning retching, Osama yacked on the table in front of the four interrogators. It reminded the cop from New York of the smell coming from the dumpster at the Kentucky Fried Chicken in the Ozone Park neighborhood when he was working the Gambino case.
We now return you to the music of Ramón Raquello, playing for you in the Meridian Room of the Park Plaza Hotel, situated in downtown Chicago.
Cross-posted at My Ongoing Struggle with Misanthropy: http://jimmygabacho.com/?p=487