All over the news today are unconfirmed reports that Bin Laden might actually be dead. Apparently somebody in the French government leaked a document to the press there, and it has stirred quite a ruckus. Nobody knows for certain, but the report suggests that Bin Laden may have died in August from typhoid fever. This makes a little bit of sense, considering he has been presumably living in a cave for the last five years, and in all likelihood drinking tainted water the whole time. There is no natural clean water left in the world.

It is amusing to me that such might be the case, since it implies that he has been drinking water tainted with human fecal matter. Certainly an un-martyr like way to meet one’s end. I would have expected a fellow like him to glorify himself by going down in a hail of gunfire. This might also explain why, if he is really dead, there has been no official news of it in the Islamic web community. There is no hero-like way to explain how somebody died from drinking shit water.

Well, if he’s dead, then that’s that. Good riddance. If he’s still alive, then that still doesn’t explain his reluctance to show himself. The last batch of videos were old re-hashed material. There was an audio recording, which may or may not be recent. But all of this came about the same time that this new report says that he may have died. It’s not sad because I don’t feel sorry for him. Stuff his filthy body under a rock somewhere in the wasted mountains of Eastern Pakistan. Anybody else would be worthy of a decent funeral.

The Iranian and Venezuelan presidents each had their day at the U.N., and while Iran was a little more diplomatic, (or was it obscure?), old Mr. Chavez held no punches. And while as an American I feel it is within my rights, indeed my duty to slam my President when I feel he might deserve it, I felt somewhat miffed at Mr. Chavez’s verbal assault, that the little fat fuck has no business coming to my country and speaking like that about anybody.

I mean, who *is* this guy anyhow? All the news suggests he thinks he is a world player because he sells oil. But if you look at the impoverished state of 80% of Venezuela, you wonder if this jerk shouldn’t spend a little more time addressing his issues at home before he starts speaking about things abroad. The little creep needs to get his own affairs in order.

To be fair, I think that Mr. Bush ought to spend a little more time addressing issues here at home as well, that while our armed forces are out trouncing around playing cowboy in places that don’t even know what cowboys are, we forget about the state of our economy, jobs and wages and homelessness and healthcare and drug addiction and illegal immigration and violent crime, you name it, the list goes on and on.

Now the Iranian president was a bit more subtle, as I said, but while I think he ought not to be ignored like we have rightly ignored the Iranians since 1979, I also think he is one of those people who ought not be entirely trusted. He seemed open and honest when he spoke in a television interview a few weeks ago, but when I heard him with CNN the other day, he was evasive, always answering questions with questions or rhetoric or as typical of most Middle Easterners, used the past actions of others to justify his own. I don’t think that Anderson Cooper got one single strait answer from him.

But yeah Mr. Bush, like it or not, it is about time to start talking to the Iranians again, and the Syrians for that matter. We still don’t have to buy oil from them if we don’t want to. But as far as fat Hugo goes, that little turd can take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. If there is any way at all to get away from Venezuelan oil, then the sooner the better for all of us.

“The city of Plzen,” Enon read aloud from the newspaper, “lies about 100 Kilometers, (62 miles), southwest of the Czech capitol, Prague.”

“Why would they lie about that?” asked Skute, who had somehow quietly woken up and wanted to join the conversation. You could tell he was still foggy from whatever drugs had induced him to pass out in the first place. Enon rolled his eyes and made a face that said he thought Skute was a complete moron. Skute saw Enon’s expression and opened his mouth to defend himself. I rapped him soundly on the top of his skull with my knuckles; the noise was similar to that of the type of wood block that is popular among rock-and-roll drummers. Kite laughed out loud. Skute soured his face and rubbed the top of his head. I made a gesture like I was going to hit him again, and he scurried away just far enough out of reach that it would be inconvenient for me to do it.

We talked about how the Pope had to apologize for something he said in a speech last week. He’d apparently been quoting some 14th-Century king, something about spreading the word of God with a sword.

“A butter knife would be better,” Kite commented. Enon looked surprised at the accidental wisdom of what she had said. So did I.

Enon and I were talking about how the White House wants to amend the articles of the Geneva Convention so that it better suits their desires. The funny thing about it is that the usual crowd of Bush-ites that follow him around Washington like lap dogs are having trouble agreeing with him for the first time in their miserable, self-serving lives. This left the President in a somewhat combative mood this morning when he held a press conference hoping to sell the idea to the general public so that we all might get on the phone to our respective Senators and Congressmen and tell them that they need to get back on the bus.

“If you listen to what he says,” Enon told me, “he makes a lot of good sense. But the trouble is,” he went on, “is that the words that come out of his mouth are only part truthful, and if anyone ever bothered to read the text – as if any of those grass-chewing crackers actually got past Dick and Jane in the first grade – of Bush’s proposed legislation, then they would see why his contingent of over-fed Pomeranians were having second thoughts about it.”

That was a mouthful for Enon, but we hadn’t started drinking whiskey yet, so it wasn’t completely unbelievable. He’s right, of course. Simply put, the bill makes it legal to torture enemy prisoners, as long as it is done outside the Code of Military Conduct, which is a separate set of laws entirely, and does not apply to civilians such as employees of the C.I.A. and private contractors acting under the direction of the U.S. Government. It means that Army personnel still can’t torture and humiliate prisoners, contrary to what we know about what happened in the recent past in Iraq, but as long as the C.I.A. is handling the prisoners, then they can pretty much do whatever they want. And get this: the bill also forgives the past so that anyone who had previously broken the law before this new bill is signed cannot be held criminally liable for their actions.

Kite, who had listened to some of the arguments in favor of the bill, was concerned about the scenario where a terrorist might know something that would save lives if he was forced to indulge the information.

“Take him out back and beat the living shit out of him,” was Enon’s response. “But don’t make it all-right by passing a law that says it’s legal.”

“The next thing you know, they will be jerking people off the streets and tying them to ducking stools just because they suspect something might be up,” I added. Enon agreed. Kite looked at me funny.

“Ducking stools are what they used back in early Massachusetts,” I clarified for her, “when the Puritans wanted someone to confess to being a witch. It was a chair hung from a long pole. The accused was strapped to the chair, and then repeatedly dunked into a lake until they either drowned or confessed.”

“What happened when they confessed,” Kite asked.

“They tied them to a pole and made a bon fire out them,” I said. She crinkled her nose in disgust.

“They actually *did* that?” she asked.

“It was a long, long time ago,” I told her. “We are much more rational and civilized about those sorts of things nowadays.”

“It’s not entirely clear to me that we are,” said Enon. He pulled a bottle of whiskey from his bag and cracked the seal. He studied it thoughtfully for a moment, swigged it, then offered the bottle to Kite. She turned it down, as he knew she would, then he passed it over to me. Just then Skute came bumbling down the path, returning after heading out earlier in search of one or another form of narcotic. Apparently he found something.

Kite gestured with her thumb over her shoulder in Skute’s direction. “Maybe we can tie *him* to a ducking stool,” she suggested.

“No lakes around here,” said Enon.

“And remember,” I told her, shaking my index finger at her, “we are much more rational and civilized than we used to be.”

“Yeah, right,” she said sarcastically.

“Here-here,” said Enon, then he took the bottle and swigged it again.

Things tend to become somewhat philosophical when Enon and I stay up drinking whiskey. Kite was snoozing peacefully near the fire, and Skute had passed out sprawled like he’d fallen from an airplane. Enon and I were talking about theocracies, a topic that had been reached through association to the President’s assertion that radical Islamists were the same sort of fascists that embodied the likes of Hitler and others similar. Enon didn’t buy the fascist argument, and thinking about it, I really didn’t either.

“A theocratic society is not the same as Nazi Germany,” Enon said. “If we are going to label the Islamists that way,” he went on, “then perhaps we ought to take a look at ourselves.”

“How so?” I asked him, already half-knowing where he was going. I sipped from my shot glass while he composed the thought in his mind.

“That’s where we are headed right now,” he told me. “If you consider the influence that the religious right has on our political system, how anyone lately who does not buy into the current mindset is immediately labeled as unpatriotic and by the way godless.”

I could see it. The U.S. Government is run by a bunch of over-zealous red-neck Christians. No rationality about it any more. The politicians foster their votes from a community of under-educated grass-chewing crackers, not necessarily because they really believe in the party line, but because they have to in order to get reelected.

“Listen to the party line, Pancho,” he told me. “It’s all about terrorism. George Bush can do whatever the fuck he wants as long as he includes terrorism in his speeches and addresses. And if he decides that there isn’t enough terrorism to keep everybody in goose-stepping formation, all he has to do is make some.”

“Like invading Iraq,” I suggested.

“Exactly,” he said.

“Like the bumper poppy crop in Afghanistan,” I said. “The Taliban can afford to pay fighters nearly twice the salary that the Afghan army earns, and all the money comes from the opium trade.”

“Ninety-five percent of the opium in the world comes from Afghanistan,” Enon agreed, “and we had it in our power at one point to put a stop to it.”

Yeah, we did. I remember how wishy-washy the generals were about that right after we invaded the place. They were worried about “winning the hearts and minds”, (a term that really bothers me lately because I hear it way too much), of the Afghan people, and the farmers would complain if the army made them all stop growing poppies. They actually allowed it to continue because they were worried about the repercussions. And now the same poppies that we ignored are being used to pay the salaries of bombers and fighters. The Taliban doesn’t need donations from rich Saudi Arabs. They control the world’s supply of opium.

Seems to me an effective use of military force might be to torch all the poppy fields, but somehow that doesn’t get done. “What will the farmers do for a living if they can’t grow opium?” is the standard argument. Give them something else to do, or tell them all to fuck off. The real question is what the army will do if the Taliban fades away because they can’t support themselves. A big chunk of our Global War on Terror would vanish into the distance, and with it a big chunk of the Bush party line.

“Ahh, but we’ll always have Iraq,” I reassured Enon.

“Probably,” he agreed. “If not, I’m sure we’ll find something else to do.”

“Here’s to making terrorists,” I raised my glass.

“Here-here,” he toasted.

The American Jihad moron made the news. I was looking at his face on the television, listening to his voice, his tone, his manner, and all I could think of was all the times I’d been assaulted by Jesus freaks over the years, these assholes who are so self-assured that their way is the right way. Fucking boneheads. The last thing I’m worried about is the life after. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

Imagine that. They actually got on the air, “inviting” all us non-believers to join in their cause, even called for the troops in Afghanistan to change sides. Like that’s going to ever happen. The only thing I can imagine about this, just like I’ve ever imagined every Jesus freak who preached at me, is these people are insane. Completely bonkers.

I suppose the invitation to join in their insanity was really a warning about some impending disaster, like they have something planned that is going to take a bunch of innocent lives, probably in New York, which happens to be a place where the morons like to attack the most. Maybe even a September 11 anniversary, as if we all decided to become insane like them, then we might be somehow spared from the violence that is yet to come.

Fucking morons. Bring it on.