Introduction to an Afghan Picnic

I had written this to a few friends who keep me from being pompous. In my mind it turned out to be the funniest part of the story. I am best--I guess--when I am least conscious. I should learn sleep writing:

I would appreciate your honest opinion on this fine field report from a safe distance if it were laced with a $100 gift certificate to shop at the final discount sale of the Osama Bin Laden commissaries throughout Afghanistan. Everything has got to go as our lease has run out, including full-equipped tunnels and caves. Great for older children. Chemistry sets for international travelers. Two way walkie talkies with built in bomb detonator. No reasonable price will be refused.

Well, the mother &%&% could be underground. You do a lot blasting, but mostly you come up with no more to show for your efforts than moving real estate from one location to another.

The Great Exodus

Thousands of Saint Osama Bin Ladens relics are on the move, on their feet, dragged, black-slung, stretchered, crated, etc. They are being smuggled out of Afghanistan, even partial Bin Ladens, heads with unshaven faces, teeth and thumbs showing the Stigmata, even parts as small as thumbnails have been secreted into the tattered linings of coats.

Last month’s Islamic fundamentalists have gone into the moving business overnight. Today they carry at least one body hung over their shoulder. Many carry two or three. Fake martyrs abound. Some of these bodies are even women and children. One elderly fighter carried a cashmere goat three hundred miles. These hardened fighters have spent nearly a decade in the worst conditions imaginable. Less than sound minds are boarding the 21st Century American-Style. This country is one obsessive Las Vegas with the Pentagon spinning the roulette wheel. The women are even stripping in the streets. And this time it isn’t Russian roulette.

Children as young as five in Kandahar, Harat and Mazar-e-Sharif drag away bodies left exposed from skirmishes weeks ago and still relatively unspoiled due to the onset of winter. The warring Mujahadeen take the children away apparently for interrogation only to release them with no sign of the bodies. Instead the children come back smiling and loaded down with American candy bars and lollipops.

American Special Forces instruct these buzzards to bring them anything they collect. They may not know about DNA, but they can do simple arithmetic. Count up how many American carriers and destroyers are in the Arabian Sea and those expendable planes and bombs used to get one man. A hunter doesn’t just hand quarry like that over unless he has a gun pointed between his eyes.

One Pakistani border guard claimed 3000 "plaster saints" passed by last week alone. "They all look remarkably like a complete Osama Bin Laden when the sun shines right on these ones," he said with a toothless smile. "But then Al-Qaeda fighters look alike, like the Chinese." Even John Wright looks Chinese.

For the past week, Afghans in swaddling clothes sneaking into Pakistan has increased ten-fold. Others wait days in long lines like camels without seeming need for food or water or even to excrete for fear of loosing their place. They still carry their Kalishnikov rifles.

One of the poorest countries is flushed with dough, in currencies from all over the world, but especially American dollars. Where they got such loot the Pakistani border guards and their commanders could care less. They take payoffs to look the other way. But that doesn’t help. When they look the other way, they only see border runners getting across for nothing. It is rumored in the streets of Peshawar that the graft goes all the way up to General Musharraf, Bush’s special friend like the Chinese who were arming the terrorists the last I read until there weren’t any left to arm. This special relationship extends to the Saudis and Putin. I pray my relations never get so special that I wake up one night only to find them perched over me with enough metal to screw up all the compasses in the neighborhood.

Not only is His Jihad being stolen. We’re stealing his identity.

Ironically one of these lookalikes may look more like Bin Laden than Bin Laden himself. Few outside of his own inner circle have seen him for weeks except on the only non-Times-Warner subsidiary in the galaxy, Qatar-based al-Jazeera television. Outsiders don’t know whether he has gone on a hunger strike or has past across a border into a state where food no longer matters.

Aunt Hannah Interview by al-Jazeera

His Aunt Hannah interviewed by the station in her apartment on the Grand Concourse in suburban Baghdad, holding her hand to her head, shrieked, "I was appalled when I saw him on television. My God, my little Bin, I remember him as a little boy, ugly but at least chubby. Now he’s nothing but skin and bones. A little chicken soup, a nice goulash and a glass of warm milk, maybe. Then he’ll stop with his crazy talk. The poor boy is sick. I warned his mother about his hanging out with those Spanish boys up the block. They are always in trouble, stealing shopping carts from old ladies. No wonder he looks so bad. Did you see him in the middle of winter in that awful country without his coat buttoned and lost mittens. A coupla weeks in Miami and he’ll be his old self."

U.S. intelligence sources worry that this Bin Laden hysteria among the devout will enable the real Bin Laden to slip through the noose. The Afghans, like ordinary Americans during the stock market roller derby of the 90s, don’t seem much to care. As long as their Bin Laden wins the sweepstakes.

Satellite surveillance cameras picked up mysterious conveys of up to two hundred trucks making their way down from the Northwest Frontier Province to Karachi where crates are loaded onto refrigerated ships heading westward. Only Allah only knows where. Soon Allah will have to share that secret since this holy memorabilia can’t be preserved forever.

Bin Laden is a native of Saudi Arabia, where his powerful family and much of his wealth still live. He has been partially disowned by both, which part the CIA isn’t sure or isn’t telling. Abwazzi Nostrum Oasis, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States would rather Americans forgot Bin Laden’s birthplace. "You had your Al Capone, so we have our Bin Laden." The reader should be reminded that Al Capone was an All-American terrorist unlike Bin Laden and his followers who respect no flag.

Getcha Oil While Its Hot

The Times of Bildgehampton, once one of Britain’s most respected newspapers, reported today that kidnapping Bin Laden lookalikes had reached the point where Saudi officials announced a temporary halt to the slave trade. "The disappearance during the last weeks of more than 400 persons, all male, all around 6’4," complexion toasted olive, emaciated build and considerably underweight, perhaps dehydrated must be stopped," said King Faisal, who himself is reported close to Paradise. Gangs broke into several hospitals and even morgues, snatching consumptives, asthmatics, bronchitics, dyspeptics, diabetics, hemophiliacs, even insomniacs, drug addicts, alcoholics, spastics, arthritics, paraplegics and those suffering bladder diseases and chronic fatigue syndrome.

The Royal Saudi Customs Force found all the specimens they seized appeared to be left-handed and from the curvature of their spines walked with a limp, perhaps with the aid of a cane.

All the News That Fits Our Prince

Quote From John Peter Zenger (1646-1727) First Saudi Granted a License To Distribute A Newspaper

If you found this informative, you haven’t been reading much than the old Grey Lady, the New York Times. But you may find part two equally shocking. We make no excuses for exaggeration, innuendo, quoting out of context, false attributions, deliberate misrepresentation, libel, slander or editorial censorship. We use the New York Times as our guide.

Andrew E. Carlan
Farmingdale, New York

You can e-mail your comments to Andrew at acarlan@optonline.net.

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