It in move of what most rational people would consider very poor PR, the leaders of the terrorist organization that everybody loves to hate, Al-Qaida, announced today that the bodies of any American troops it captures will be dragged through the streets of Kabul.

With the commitment of US ground troops just days away and the almost certain probability that US casualties will occur, it is time for the American people to harden themselves before the first images of mutated American soldiers appear on television. (And this is also a good time to remember that we must be eternally grateful to those troops who are right now preparing to place themselves in harms way for our collective security. Planning on heading into a place where death is definitely the preferable option to capture.)

I'm sure the ultra left of the American political spectrum will find some reason to justify the horrific actions by the terrorists we are about to witness, most likely by blaming past U.S. actions in the Middle East for inflaming the passions of the terrorists and by also pointing out that if US troops weren't in Afghanistan, none of this would have happened.

However, for better or worse, I'm not part of the American ultra left and while I find thought of ground troops in Afghanistan more then a little unsettling, I have to admit I simply don't have any better ideas.

Given the uncivilized behavior promised by the terrorist, I started fantasying about an appropriate American response should I happen to be a vengeful sort of person. If I were that sort of person, I'd request that any of the terrorists we captured that were responsible for the embassy bombing, the Cole, the WTC or the anthrax mailing (or anything else bad) suffer the following fate.

First, one of the key beliefs of many fun-duh-mentalists Muslims is that they appear in heaven as they did at their last moment on earth. So, if their "manhood" was forcibly removed and should the terrorist actually manage to somehow achieve martyrdom they so desperately wish for and thus be entitled to his 70 forever virgin heavenly brides, not having his pecker would ensure that those brides would stay forever virgin. Even without any sort of magical self-repairing hymen that heavenly brides apparently must have in order to remain forever virgin. (That's a conundrum best analyzed some another time)

Second, many fun-duh-mentalist Muslims also apparently believe that access to heaven will be forever denied if they have been desecrated with an unclean animal shortly before death. So, instead of a prick with a nice clean needle loaded with a super toxic chemical cocktail administered by the federal guards in Terre Haute, Indiana, the terrorists can be shoved inside freshly slaughtered pigs and then killed by stuffing link after link of pork sausages down their esophagi until their stomachs rupture.

But that would be uncivilized, now wouldn't it?

Feeling any tougher yet?

Check it out yourself

dunsmuir@pigdog.org