PAKISTAWNY, AFGHANISTAN -- The world's most wanted terrorist, Pakistawny Osama, emerged
from his burrow Saturday and saw his shadow, indicating Afghanistan will see six
more weeks of bombing.
In a
traditional ceremony lead by Osama's handler, Chief Scribe Colin Powell, Osama was roused
from his underground lair near the Afghani-Pakistan border in the early morning hours.
Powell, who speaks the native "Groundhogese" of Osama, consulted with the half-man,
half-rodent to record this year's prediction. He then flew by helicopter to the sleepy
the hamlet of Pakistawny.
"And on this second day of February, two-thousand two," Powell read from a comically
oversized parchment scroll, "Osama bin-Laden, alleged mastermind behind the September
eleventh tragedy, and noted wartime prognosticator, confided to me that he did, indeed,
see his shadow."
"Six more weeks of bombing," he concluded.
The legend of the woodchuck-Saudi halfbreed, and his strife-predicting powers, dates
back over four centuries among the Islamic people of the region. In the mid-1800s,
Western merchants learned of the tradition, but found the freakish ratman too
distributing for their European sensibilities.
Today, a similar tradition is celebrated in rural Pennsylvania. However, the
sanitized version involves a merely intelligent (not horrifically mutated) groundhog who
predicts the weather (not armed conflict).
In a
traditional ceremony lead by Osama's handler, Chief Scribe Colin Powell, Osama was roused
from his underground lair near the Afghani-Pakistan border in the early morning hours.
Powell, who speaks the native "Groundhogese" of Osama, consulted with the half-man,
half-rodent to record this year's prediction. He then flew by helicopter to the sleepy
the hamlet of Pakistawny.
