Treatment of POW's

Friday, December 17, 2004 2:58 PM

A person wrote a letter to the White House complaining about the
treatment of a captive taken during the Afghanistan war. Below is a copy
of the response.

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,
Don Rumsfeld