Flashback: The Onion’s Great Piece on the 9/11 Hijackers Shortly After the Attacks

(Plus the bounty on bin Laden’s head and an unexpected bonus)

After the 9/11 attacks it was widely proclaimed that this would also be “The End of Irony.” (Rumors of its death were highly exaggerated as we know now.) 10 days after the attacks there was a great piece at The Onion of which I’ve kept a printed copy tacked to a bulletin board ever since. What was great about the piece was that while it was funny (and the first time I and a lot of other people had got a chuckle out of something since the attacks), but it was also hard-hitting in a kinda’ ‘Hell Yeah!’ way.

I was planning on re-posting it on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, but somehow it seems appropriate to do so now as a reminder of what bin Laden is now currently experiencing. The language may not be entirely SFW, but here’s the beginning of the piece:

”JAHANNEM, OUTER DARKNESS—The hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon expressed confusion and surprise Monday to find themselves in the lowest plane of Na'ar, Islam's Hell.”

“’I was promised I would spend eternity in Paradise, being fed honeyed cakes by 67 virgins in a tree-lined garden, if only I would fly the airplane into one of the Twin Towers," said Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11, between attempts to vomit up the wasps, hornets, and live coals infesting his stomach. "But instead, I am fed the boiling feces of traitors by malicious, laughing Ifrit. Is this to be my reward for destroying the enemies of my faith?’”

“The rest of Atta's words turned to raw-throated shrieks, as a tusked, asp-tongued demon burst his eyeballs and drank the fluid that ran down his face.

So it’ll be just like a class reunion for ObL and the boys! More likely it’ll be some small relief for Atta and company that Ifrit and the others will turn their tender mercies to a new target, at least for a little while.

Whither the Bounty on bin Laden’s Head?

(Apologies if this has been covered already but I don’t even read my own crap, much less any of the other posts here. Plus I needed an excuse to use ‘whither’ in a sentence.)

As you may recall:

”The $25 million (£15m) reward for information offered by the US Government was bolstered by a further $2 million (£1m) raised privately by the Airline Pilots Association and the Air Transport Association.”

“The FBI made no comment yesterday as to whether any part of the bounty would now be paid after US Navy Seals successfully targeted his compound in Pakistan.”

Here’s the take on it from a relative of one of the 9/11 victims, and it’s fairly representative of what I’ve read on the innertubes so far today:

Scott Cleere, from Tampa, Florida,whose father Jim was killed in the September 11 attacks, said: “I’d like to see if these six Marines will get the bounty reward for him. And I would hope that they do because they do deserve it.”

I think that’s probably an honest gut-reaction to it, but is it the right way to go? What about the helicopter crews that also risked their lives? Or you could take it back even further, really, but where would the cutoff point be? What about the interrogaters who pried the information loose that allowed the raid to be successfully carried out?

And if you asked the SEALS themselves, they’d probably tell you they were just doing their duty and would feel wrong about taking the money (I could be wrong, but these guys typically have a very high sense of duty and honor.) I dunno myself what the answers are, so I’ll pose it to you: What, if anything should be done with the bounty?

And finally,

V-ObL Day?

(Or V-UbL day if you want)

The thing that makes this all the sweeter is that it took place on May 1st, AKA May Day, where communist creeps worldwide get together and celebrate working stiffs with such cherished activities as decorating a May Pole and rioting.

(Ok, technically it was already May 2nd in Pakistan when the assault occured but it was still May 1st in the US, so bite me.)

So I find it pleasing that the greasing of bin Laden overshadowed the annual far-left temper tantrum and drove it off the nightly local news broadcasts where it most likely would've been one of the lead stories.

As far as I'm concerned, the Red Menace no longer has complete ownership of May 1st, at least for a little while (And the double-juicy irony is that the protests/riots typically protest anything and everything military. Well, anything and everything military that doesn't involve armed leftist revolution.)

Yesterday was a very good day indeed.

posted by Genghis at 06:30 PM

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