Witchcraft Torture.....I knew it

[JSMosby]

Yes, I am violating strict OPSEC protocol, but I figure Wikileaks will be breaking this story soon anyway.

An evil spin-off of the New Earth Army was the rediscovery of the ancient art of witchcraft. Unfortunately, a recently released (and obviously innocent) Gitmo detainee has uncovered our devious plot.....

Witchcraft Uncovered

Let us pray that our highly trained (and of course...Jewish) sorcerers escape the long arm of the ACLU

Highlight from the transcript.....

Interviewer: Did they ever use witchcraft on you?

Walid Muhammad Hajj: There was one attempt.

Interviewer: How did they do it?

Walid Muhammad Hajj: Once, when I was sleeping – on the floor, not on a bed – I suddenly felt that a cat was trying to penetrate me. It tried to penetrate me again and again.. I recited the kursi verse again and again until the cat left.

WTF?

[Dusty]

Originally Posted by JSMosby

Yes, I am violating strict OPSEC protocol, but I figure Wikileaks will be breaking this story soon anyway.

An evil spin-off of the New Earth Army was the rediscovery of the ancient art of witchcraft. Unfortunately, a recently released (and obviously innocent) Gitmo detainee has uncovered our devious plot.....

Witchcraft Uncovered

Let us pray that our highly trained (and of course...Jewish) sorcerers escape the long arm of the ACLU

Highlight from the transcript.....

Interviewer: Did they ever use witchcraft on you?

Walid Muhammad Hajj: There was one attempt.

Interviewer: How did they do it?

Walid Muhammad Hajj: Once, when I was sleeping – on the floor, not on a bed – I suddenly felt that a cat was trying to penetrate me. It tried to penetrate me again and again.. I recited the kursi verse again and again until the cat left.

WTF?

So, they talk like beatniks?

[Richard]

This is not such a strange way of thinking according to Leon Uris in his book on the history of Jerusalem:

Beyond the grasp of the early empire builders, the Arabian Peninsula remained remote, inaccessible and unconquered. Life and culture in the punishingly cruel desert developed according to the harsh dictates of nature. It remained in a primitive state without a developing technology. Mere survival took eminent priority over education, medicine, agricultural technique or urban grandeur. In the northern segment of the desert nomadic bands evolved a culture grounded in the blood oath of the clan, which engaged in continuous tribal warfare. They raided the weak and plundered the caravans. Along the Red Sea in the west and on the Persian Gulf in the east, more agricultural settlement took place and there were overseas trading ports with enough craftsmanship and rare products to sustain them. Binding this vast, semi-charted, blisteringly arid land, was a crisscross bloodline of caravan routes, their goods riding on the humps of camels domesticated two thousand years before the advent of Jesus.

The lifestyle of the peninsula was and remains alien to that of the balance of the world. The fight for existence was reflected in a brutal society. Strong men and strong clans emerged while the weak went under, with little pity shed on them. The peninsula consisted of dozens of tribal units that were never unified in a national sense but constantly shifted alliances. A system of absolute social order developed so that each man had a specific place within the tribe. The only way one could rise within the system was to destroy the man above and dominate the men beneath. Their ethics and sense of justice, totally foreign to Western concepts, called for cruel and final decision. The demands of survival left no room for convocations of scholars to equivocate in forums or parliaments to argue on democratic principles. The law of the desert was absolute.

Dozens of religious cults of various tribes were pagan and primitive. Their beliefs were dictated by the forces of nature. Colonies of Jews which had settled the more mercantile areas since the time of Solomon had lent many Judaic beliefs to thee cults. Early Christianity, which was strong on the coast of North Africa, also filtered down to mingle with the Arab religious beliefs.

While the Byzantine Empire and Persia hammered away at each other and were bleeding each other into exhaustion, a power vacuum developed in the seventh century which was destined to be filled by a future Arab nation out of this peninsula.

Life was dull, dirty, repetitious and structured, with little room for humor and less for cultural and technical expansion. The daily search for sufficient food and water still left far too much time for one to find the shadow of a shade tree and daydream. Mirages of the mind abounded. Fantasy blotted out the cruelty of life, made great sheiks out of shepherds, made water where there was no oasis, made warriors out of cowards. Truth and fiction intermingled within the Arab mind so that, to the Arab, fantasy and reality were often one and the same. Fantasy was perpetuated with a language known for its overkill of exaggeration and verbal flights of imagination. The Arab describing the most simple scene can twist it into wild complexity. The act of an easy barter or purchase can become a play of monumental proportions.

The only way people could keep going day after day was to adopt a passive acceptance of their lot. The moment was ripe for a religion based on fatalism. There were actually two vacuums to be filled: one, the political/military vacuum with the decline of the reigning powers, and the second, a religious vacuum through creation of a faith to conform to their fatalism. Add to this the acceptance of fantasy as fact and the time was at hand for a dynamic personality to capture the Arab mind and unify it for the first time.

And so it goes...still, it would seem...

Richard

[lindy]

Interesting. We always used lemon juice & water to make buttermilk but I suppose urine would work in a pinch.

The best line: "When the guards pass by my cell, the sound made by their pants talks to me."

Must have been Mexican night at the DFAC.

[T-Rock]

Walid Muhammad Hajj: Once, when I was sleeping – on the floor, not on a bed – I suddenly felt that a cat was trying to penetrate me. It tried to penetrate me again and again.. I recited the kursi verse again and again until the cat left.

WTF?

What he had were precognitive psychic dreams, prophetic dreams about the pressure from the grave. Very few Muslims escape the “torments of the grave”…

[akv]

For a second there I was guessing we were subjecting Gitmo inmates to Nancy Pelosi.

IMHO, more support for the notion Greg Mortenson is America's best weapon in Afghanistan...

[nmap]

Ahh, the wicked fun that one could have with a few miniature speakers...

[Sten]

Originally Posted by Dusty

So, they talk like beatniks?

This wins the Thread.

Originally Posted by Sten

This wins the Thread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3jt5ibfRzw

[incarcerated]

Originally Posted by lindy

Must have been Mexican night at the DFAC.

Or the broccoli slaw and raw curried cabbage salad…

[1stindoor]

I thought the guards were wearing corduroys.