An email doing the rounds.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Pakistan
The following is the text of a briefing on the recent tragic events in Abbottabad given by the official spokesman to the international media:
“How could we not have known where OBL was? As you know, there are known knowns and unknown knowns. You do know that, don’t you? There are things we know we know, like which side of our naan is buttered. Ghee actually: clarified butter. We like things to be clarified, which is what we’re doing now. But there are other things that we don’t know we know. These are things buried deep in the rubble of our subconscious, like the Mossad agents under the debris of the twin towers they brought down. So we didn’t know that we knew where OBL was. Or didn’t know when we were asked if we knew.
When we said OBL wasn't in Pakistan we weren't lying. You just don't understand how tough a neighbourhood we live in. None of our borders is settled. Afghanistan claims Pakhtunkhwa, the Indians won't give us Kashmir, we've given up part of the Northern Areas to China. We just don't know where Pakistan begins and where it ends. Honestly. And it’s a canard to say that Britain is girdled by the sea, Pakistan by the C-in-C. Or that India runs from coast to coast, Pakistan from COAS to COAS. Hindu libels. OK? Truth is we didn't know Abbottabad was in Pakistan.
How could we? Abbottabad? In a pure Muslim country? A town that sounds like an abbey? I ask you. Of course we thought it didn't belong to us. Would we have kept calling it Abbottabad if we'd known it was ours? These old colonial names are like pork; we don’t want to put them in our mouths. We turned Lyallpur into Faisalabad, the Lawrence Gardens into the Bagh-e-Jinnah. We'd have given Abbottabad a good Muslim name, something like Oblistan, if we thought it belonged to us.
Why did the Pakistan Army have its academy and so many establishments there then? You know how our Army is. It keeps going into places that don't belong to Pakistan. It's a tradition it started in 1947. Doesn't mean that because the Pakistan Army's there it's part of Pakistan.
But the Americans did find OBL there and kill him and the Pakistan Army was all around him. So how did the Army not know when the Americans did? But of course we knew he was there, but we knew him as Abu Abdullah. If you'd asked us, Do you know where Abu Abdullah is, we'd have told you. You never did. We wonder why. Was it to make Pakistan look bad later? You didn’t know that he was called Abu Abdullah? How could you not have known? You expect us to believe that?
We also thought he was dead. Earlier, well before the Americans arrived. Why? Because over the last five years we've delivered well over 72 virgins to that house. So we thought he'd been martyred already.
We didn’t know Abu Abdullah was a Saudi Sheikh. Crescent my heart and hope to dye, like our President does. We knew OBL was a Saudi Sheikh, but they only come to Pakistan in the winter to hunt for the houbara. ******** in full hawk after bustards. They don’t go to Abbottabad, they go straight to Rahim Yar Khan, so that’s where we looked out for him. All the doctors who treat the young boys there the morning after are ISI agents, and have asked each one of them if they felt something holy had entered them the night before. The Sheikh is, as you know, a holy man. But, alas, they all said that there was nothing holy about what had been done to them.
We thought we’d dropped enough hints about where Abu Abdullah was. Abu, abbot – the same root. We said he was a holy man, you said he was a bad man, so he was a common oxymoron, a bad holy man. That’s why we kept him in Abbot-a-bad. We thought you’d have understood. Where would you find a malignant evangelist? Churchill. A promiscuous prioress? Nuneaton. Not our fault if the penny didn’t drop. Which reminds us: could you spare a dime?
Why? Because we are one of the countries hit hardest by global warming. That’s what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says, though it’s run by an Indian. And it’s happening faster than anyone anticipated. First the Americans warming up with the baniyas, and now seals in Abbottabad. What next? We need billions fast. At least give us the 25 million you put on OBL’s head. If we hadn’t looked after him, he’d have died shivering in a cave in Tora-Bora, no one would have found him, and you wouldn’t have been able to pull off this stunt. So be grateful. That’s all we ask.
And now of course you’ve killed him while he was saying his sehri prayers. Yes, yes, that’s why he didn’t have a gun with him. You know what this means of course. The US President has holy blood on his hands. Obama sin laden. And then we’re told that OBL was taken out to Carl bin Son and dropped into the sea: that’s a giveaway. How can this Carl be the son of his son? Nonsense. These last rites carried out in such indecent haste: we know where his body is. He’s been taken to Canter-bury. That’s where meddling priests are quickly buried, aren’t they?
Of course we saw the helicopters coming in. Our radar system is the best in the world. In 1998, just before we tested our bombs, we saw Israeli ground-attack planes on tarmacs in India that no one else could see, and told the UN. Ask the Indians if you don’t believe us. So why didn't we shoot the helicopters down? Well you see, like the rest of you, we knew that Will and Kate hadn't announced where they were going to honeymoon, and we thought this might be them coming in on the quiet to give the slip to the paparazzi. Can't blame us, can you? Abbottabad seems like the sort of place that someone who'd just been dubbed the Baron Carrickfergus might wish to escape to. (They can still come, you know. There’s a des-res with all the mod-cons that’s just come on the market. Has its own helipad. Lovely place to get away from it all.)
And of course we knew there was something going on at the compound that night. You really believe that the ISI wouldn’t know if there was a firefight raging half a mile from our military academy in Abbottabad, even if we thought that it wasn’t in Pakistan. We had a secure two-way link with Abu Abdullah that the Americans never picked up. Two empty non-alcoholic beer cans with the tops cut out and tied with string. So when the Americans came through the door, we heard him yelling “May Day, May Day”. Why didn’t we help? Well at first we thought he was stating the obvious; we knew it was May Day. Then someone said he was probably speaking in Bengali and asking for girls, but it was quite late and we didn’t think we’d find any.
Why would he be speaking in Bengali? Well you know he has had time hanging heavy on his hands, and might have wanted to pick up a foreign language. Besides, this is the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, if you didn’t know, and OBL looked so like him that all the jihadis from Bangladesh would fall at his feet and call him Gurudev. Maybe, who knows, he’d started to believe that he was a reincarnation. Utterly Hindu of course, and no wonder he got his just desserts.
Yes, and OF COURSE we picked up the yells of "Geronimo EKIA". You know it's an Indian name. That's what the Americans say. Always knew he was an Indian, that b****rd. And you know what the SEALs actually reported, don't you? They said "26/11 Geronimo ne kia". 9/11, 26/11, all Indian plots. Thank god our good friends the Americans now know the truth. We've known it all along."
Hope it isn't O/T for this thread. If so, no more.
). Instead all this dancing around about how crucial an all-lie TSP is in the so called GWOT.