The Chaff

Wednesday, January 19th, 2005

My Pen Pal, Donald Rumsfeld

Someone forwarded me this oh so hilarious letter to “liberals” from “Donald Rumsfeld:

The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C. Dear Concerned Citizen: Thank you for your recent letter criticizing our treatment of the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The administration takes these matters seriously, and your opinion was heard loud and clear here in Washington. You’ll be pleased to learn that, thanks to the concerns of citizens like you, we are creating the Terrorist Retraining Program, to be called the “Liberals Accept Responsibility For Killers” program or LARK for short. In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have decided to place one terrorist under your personal care.

Your detainee has been selected and scheduled for transportation to your residence next Monday. Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud is to be cared for pursuant to the standards you personally demanded in your letter of admonishment.

We will conduct weekly inspections to ensure that your standards of care for Ahmed are commensurate with those you so strongly recommended in your letter. Although Ahmed is sociopathic and extremely violent, we hope that your sensitivity to what you described as his “attitudinal problem” will help him overcome this character flaw. Perhaps you are correct in describing these problems as mere cultural differences.

Your adopted terrorist is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand combat and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil or nail clippers. He is also expert at making a wide variety of explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish to keep those items locked up, unless you feel that this might offend him.

Ahmed will not wish to interact with your wife or daughters since he views females as a subhuman form of property. This is a particularly sensitive subject for him. He has been known to show violent tendencies around women who fail to comply with the dress code that he considers appropriate, but I’m sure that over time they will come to enjoy the anonymity offered by the bhurka. Just remind them that it is all part of respecting his culture and his religious beliefs.

Thanks again for your letter. We truly appreciate it when folks like you inform us of the proper way to do our job. Take good care of Ahmed and good luck!

Cordially, Donald H. Rumsfeld

After I stopped fuming about the idiocy of confusing “don’t torture people” with “coddle them” and “treat prisoners according to the law” with “become enslaved to prisoners,” I managed to pen the following response:

Dear Mr. Rumsfeld,

I was thrilled to read about your new program, and I am ready to take responsibility for my killer. I will be happy to incarcerate him in accordance with the laws of my state as soon as the federal government establishes that Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud is in fact a killer or a terrorist. For some direction on how you might establish this proposition, I direct you to the following document, particularly Articles 5 and 6:
http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Amend.html.

(I must admit, I am somehwat surprised that you are unaware of this document, since you have, after all, sworn an oath to uphold it. Surely that was just an oversight that will quickly be corrected.)

Granted, Ahmed may not be a citizen of the United States (although given the record your department has had with US citizens, I would also like to see this established as well), but you must certainly be aware of subsequent statutes that extended these rights to non-citizens in the US and to certain quaint international treaties governing the treatment of “detainees.” If you are unfamiliar with these, perhaps you can consult Mr. Alberto Gonzales, nominee for Attorney General, as he has studied all available loopholes in these statutes in excruciating detail.

I look forward to hearing your update on Ahmed’s case. I realize you are busy with all the inauguration parties right now, but I’m sure Ahmed won’t mind the delay. After three years, what’s one more week?

Sincerely yours,
Dorothy Lindman
Patriotic Liberal

P.S.: I see that you signed this letter personally instead of stamping it. I am truly humbled to be accorded an honor that you don’t even grant to the families of our dead soldiers. I will treasure it forever.

D.L.

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