Bobcrespo.com has done it again, successfully wiretapping the latest meeting of the Al Qaeda Leadership Council, held in the conference room of a Day’s Motor Inn on the outskirts of the city of Abbotancostelloabad in Western Pakistan. The recent “firing” of long time CEO Osama bin Laden has prompted much behind-the-scenes jockeying for the top spot by several contenders, and this meeting was held to settle the issue once and for all in order to continue their ongoing mission to “kill where no man has killed before.”  The meeting was chaired by Sheik Yerbouti of Wazzuppistan.

Sheik Yerbouti: Gentlemen, this meeting is called to order. As we all know, our leader of blessed memory, Osama bin Laden, has been martyred by The Great Satan and is now enjoying his menage a’ 72 in Paradise, so it is left to us to pick a new leader. Let’s get right down to business, shall we? I nominate myself! The floor is open.

Sultan Peppah: Wait just a doggone minute, Yerbouti! Who died and made you king?

Sheik Yerbouti: Osama did! It is well known that I was Osama’s most trusted aide and his only logical successor!

Mullah Yaba Dabadu: I’ll tell you what I recall, you goat-humping old swine, that at the last meeting of the leadership council you refused the honor of taking the #2 job and forced Osama  to be his own assistant, thus dooming him!

Ayatollah Howmennee: Dabadu’s right! Allah knows that The Great Satan has been picking off our #2 men for years with their metal robot hawks! Maybe if you took the #2 job Osama would still be alive and you would be the one sleeping with the fishes!

Sheik Yerbouti: Can I help it if all our #2 men boasted of their elevation on Facebook! What ever happened to following the Book Of Corleone: “Never tell anyone outside the family what you’re thinking!”

Ayatollah Howmennee: Tell that to your Twitter following, you simpering jackal!

Sheik Yerbouti: Who would you propose to take the Blessed Martyr’s place, yourself?

Ayatollah Howmennee: I myself am unworthy, but I do nominate the eminent and bloodthirsty Ali Ali Oxenfrei, who so bravely organized the tribal warlords to resist the American military in Afghanistan. He is a man among men!

Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: That’s exactly the problem with him, he’s got more teenaged boyfriends than a Republican Senator!

Sultan Peppah: You’re point being?

Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: Allah preserve us! If 3 veiled homely wives were good enough for Martyr Osama, I say we don’t elect this drooling chicken hawk to lead us. What are we, The Village People all of a sudden?

Ayatollah Howmennee: So, you would reject centuries of established custom just because you prefer the bed of a woman? You’re no better than those infidel Tea Party buffoons who would deny gay marriage in the Great Satan!

Sheik Yerbouti: Gentlemen, gentleman, we are getting off topic here! We have come here to choose a new leader of the fight to crush the Western dogs and spread Islam to every corner of the earth.

Ayatollah Howmennee: Even Vegas?  Get real, Yerbouti, there has to be some pockets of decadent idolatry and fornication left for us to condemn, otherwise our whole reason for living would cease to exist! If you recall our last meeting, there was some unfinished business of exactly who gets to govern Las Vegas once we take over, and I graciously volunteered for this unpleasant task.

Sheik Yerbouti: Good point, Howmennee. And yes, I suppose you can have the honor of presiding over that den of sinful fornicators and condemn them to your heart’s content.

Ayatollah Howmennee: Of course one would have to extensively sample these deviant pleasures in oder to speak authoritatively on such matters…

Sheik Yerbouti: Alright already, Howmennee, we got the disturbing mental memo! Enough! If you elect me, the job is all yours.

Ayatollah Howmennee: Then I support you completely. I will be leaving soon to do some undercover research in order to prepare the way…

Sultan Peppah: Not so fast, curry breath! What about Caliph Hamman Aigz? He is a loyal Muslim and an experienced fighter!

Sheik Yerbouti: Hamman Aigz? Even we are not so dimwitted to follow a man with such a name! Our pubic relations have taken a severe enough beating already this week! Have any of you seen the latest polls? We are held in lower esteem than even Shotgun Dick Cheney!

Imam Hoosyah Dadyeh: Hold off on the vote a sec, willya, I must visit the lavatory. This rancid Pakistani lamb kebab is going through me like an express camel caravan through the Sahara!

Sheik Yerbouti: Okay, fine, Dadyeh, but make it fast, you never know when one of those robot Predator Hawks will pick up our trail. We will take a 5 minute break for refreshments.

Mullah Yaba Dabadu: What is that infernal whistling sound? Okay, who left the tea kettle boiling?

(Editor’s note: At this point there was a loud boom on our tape, then a brief silence, but luckily the microphone withstood whatever caused it.)

Imam Hoosyah Dadyeh: Okay, I’m back. Did I miss anyth…. What the fuck! Alrighty then, let us duly record this day that I, Imam Hoozyah Dadyeh of Weirdistan, will henceforth and forever be the undisputed and Supreme Leader of Al Qaeda.  Are their any objections?

The Assembled Al Qaeda Leadership Council:

Imam Hoosyah Dadyeh: Then it is unanimous! Meeting adjourned, Death to America. Taxi!

For the umpteenth time the Pentagon has announced that it has killed or captured the #2 man in Al Qaeda. The title, while it might be loaded with prestige for the man who gets to sit at the right hand of Osama bin Laden, has to be one of the most hazardous jobs around. Now that America has killed the latest #2 man, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, with an unmanned predator drone aircraft, somebody has to move up a notch to fill his job. The meeting of the Al Qaeda Leadership Council to pick a successor to Mr. al-Yazid went something like this:

Osama bin Laden: “I guess you’re wondering why I’ve called you all here…”

Sheik Yerbouti: “No, we’re not wondering, Ozzy. Everybody knows what happened to Mustafa. You’re looking to appoint a new #2 man. Well, count me out!”

Osama bin Laden: “It is duly noted that you don’t want the job, Sheik Yerbouti, and don’t call me Ozzy!”

Mullah Yabba Dabadu: “Sheik Yerbouiti isn’t the only one around here who feels that way, Osama. Allah knows that the #2 job in Al Qaeda is very hazardous to your health”.

Osama bin Laden: “Where is your martyr spirit, my people! Let’s keep the big picture in mind here, the defeat and conversion to Islam of the Great Satan America.”

Sheik Yerbouiti: “And where is yours, Ozzy? No one here remembers you volunteering to blow yourself up for the cause!”

Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: “Yerbouti’s right! You want to fill the #2 job so bad, take it yourself!”

Osama bin Laden: “How can I be an assistant to myself! Besides, the role of martyr does not fall to leaders and planners like ourselves…”

Sultan Peppah: “Tell that to the last couple of dozen #2 men, Ozzy!”

Osama bin Laden: “They were well rewarded with 72 virgins in Paradise, and Alllah is most pleased with them! And stop calling me Ozzy!”

Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: “And since when is our mission to defeat and convert America? We thought it was only to get America to leave us alone!”

Osama bin Laden: “After 8 years in Afghanistan, is has become obvious that the Great Satan is a very tenacious foe and will not leave until they kill or capture me. Therefore, they must be completely defeated and their country must be converted to Islam.”

Sultan Peppah: “Oh, is that all? Defeat the most modern army in the world and take over America? With what? Hijacked airplanes and illiterate goat herders? What part of Guerilla Insurgency don’t you get, Ozzy?”

Osama bin Laden: “The guerilla insurgency will defeat the Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then we move the fight to their home soil for complete victory. And stop calling me Ozzy!”

Ayatollah Howmenee: “Conquer America? You had your cave checked for mold spores lately, Ozzy, ’cause you’re not thinking straight. Last time we did that they invaded Afghanistan, annihilated its army and toppled their government in like, what, 3 weeks? A year or so later they did the same thing to Iraq,  only this time they hung their leader for good measure. Now their flying robots kill us like steel hawks from the  sky! This would be a good time to lay out the grand plan to defeat these people, Ozzy. Where’s your invasion force gonna land? Who gets to govern Vegas once America surrenders?”

Osama bin Laden: “Enough with the Ozzy already! We will conquer the Great Satan from within, with American Muslim men willing to die for Allah.”

Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: “Sure, like that Einstein you sent to Times Square! Get real! I’m thinking now that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to use up all 19 of our top guys on that 9/11 mission. What have we done since then? The Shoe-Bomber nitwit and the Times Square slacker, who left the keys to his damned getaway car in the car bomb?”

Sultan Peppah: “A car bomb which never went off, might I add?”

Osama bin Laden: “Okay, so they all can’t be home runs. What about the trains in Spain?”

Sheik Yerbouti: “Like the Rolling Stones song says: ‘Who wants yesterday’s papers?’”

Osama bin Laden: “Personally, I prefer ‘Exile on Main Street,’ but what is your point?”

Sheik Yerbouti: “I mean that you used up all of our best people in a just couple of big headline bombings, that’s what! The rest of ‘em can’t even read, for Allah’s sake! They couldn’t plan a meal, never mind spectacular attacks on infidels. Most of our people are real good at shooting AK47s up into the air and howling like banshees, and not much else! This is your army, pal, so command it to overthrow The Great Satan already! And while you’re feeling frisky, why stop at the conquest of America? Our toothless illiterates ought to be able to conquer the whole world in a couple of years, right?”

Osama bin Laden: “It will take more than a couple of years, my friend, perhaps even a decade…”

Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: “10 years and the world will be ours? In that case, you are indeed a masterful leader touched by Allah, and no man is worthy to be your assistant. I call upon this counsel to proclaim that from this day forward: ‘No mortal man shall sit at the right hand of Osama The Great.’ He will be his own #2 in Al Qaeda. long may he live! Those in favor say Aye!”

The Assembled Leadership Council: “Aye!”

Osama bin Laden: “Now, wait just a dog-gone minute…”

Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: The ‘Ayes’ have it! Congratulations, Ozzy, from here on in you’re your own Number 2# man! Let the world know that Osama The Great is both the #1 and the #2 man! Meeting adjourned. Watch out for those hawks, Ozzy!

Has anything gone right in Afghanistan since the opening weeks of that war when we destroyed their army and toppled the government? If that sounds like winning a war, well, that usually  does the trick, but America was in Afghanistan for another reason, to capture the madman who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden. He wasn’t a part of the Afghansitan government, but a Sauidi Arabian of Yemeni descent, and he and his al Qaeda gang were being given a base of operations by the Taliban regime from which to train suicide killers and plan terrorist attacks. Both the head of the Taliban, one Mullah Omar, and Osama bin Laden escaped the initial onslaught and have been on the lam ever since, both still very active in their respective gangs.

For 8 years now we’ve been killing or capturing a series of #2 al Qaeda guys, possibly the least attractive job in Afghanistan. Now we get word that we have captured the #2 Taliban man, some goon with the mouthful of a name Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Meanwile, his boss, and the al Qaeda boss, both of them a striking 6 foot 6, have melted into the bleak landscape somewhere in the nebulous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Catching the #2 man in any organization might be a public relations coup, but doesn’t really do the trick of crippling the organization.

That’s like catching Larry of the Three Stooges and leaving Moe free. He and Curly would still be capable of all sorts of mayhem. And if the new #2 guy Curly gets apprehended, then Moe would simply go on with the show with Shemp and Joe Besser. Moe is the mastermind behind all the havoc perpetrated by the Three Stooges, the “brains” of that outfit, or at least as far as brains go with outfits like the Three Stooges and the Taliban. Usually just enough to make a ton of trouble for everybody else, and it’s always Moe’s idea. It’s the same with Osama and Omar. Without them, the rest of the Taliban and al Qaeda Stooges couldn’t plan lunch, never mind a tyrannical government or a deadly terrorist organization.

Osama makes more inspirational videos than Tony Robbins while planning further attacks on the West as we capture or kill his latest Larry. And now we’ve started down that same road with the Taliban, with the big cheese Mullah “Moe” Omar still out there on the loose running the Taliban and organizing it into a lethal guerrilla force, waiting for the day America tires of searching for the twin Moes so he can seize power again. The recent assault by 15,000 soldiers on a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan saw sporadic fighting by a rear guard Larry Brigade assigned to hold off the enemy until the rest of the Talistooge guerrillas melted back into the mountains.

Mullah Omar will simply have his Stooges reappear where the enemy is not, that’s the name of the game in a rebel insurgency. He found out 8 years ago that the Talistooges were no match for a modern army and has tailored his tactics accordingly, while America and her allies have not. Unless and until they can capture a Moe, this war will be continue to be a stalemate. Kill or capture the twin Moes, and there is no more Taliban or al Qaeda for the other Stooges to follow. Enough with the capturing of yet another Larry. That’s happened so often it’s not even news anymore. Go after Moe or go home.