How's your prayer rug, Osama?

Have you pulled it out lately?

Or have you been a little too busy for prayer?

I thought so.

Oh, well, you're probably getting ready for bed in your part of the world. It's been another busy day, detailing the fine points of your next masterplan. It must be fun, hunched over a map of the world and studying it as Ho Chi Minh might have examined the boot of Vietnam with Mao Zedong looking protectively over his shoulder.

How many undercover Reds do you have working for you?

Who in your army has "gotten the real program," and who of them are actual Muslims?

Must be a tough call to sort them all out. Has you looking over your shoulder, doesn't it?

Say "Allah," Osama!

Pretty good.

I'd buy it. However, it's the end of another long, triumphant day and even an enlightened revolutionary might savor the sound, if only as pure music.

But what of tomorrow morning? We're both at war now, and on opposite sides. I know my morning was a little difficult. One's eyes open and the first thing that hits us is what we've done the day before. I wrote some very angry words on Friday, September 14^th, and I'm out on a limb. It's too late to take them back. However, I prayed my prayers and surrendered to my God, Yahweh, and my prophet, Jesus of Nazareth.

When I feel I've gone too far, I pray to Christ for His intercession. He then talks to God on my behalf and explains that I'm very upset and only human. That's how we do it.

What kind of prayers do you say, Osama?

I mean, having murdered several thousand Americans, you must have at least an occasional second thought, no?

Sure you do.

Don't let your troops see them, though.

Oh, they're more understanding than that? They know that killing is a dirty business, but someone's gotta do it?

How's your Oval Office?

Nothing like the cushy executive chairs some of your fellow architects in New York have. You'd think the 'dirty work' was enough without the dirty living quarters as well. Oh, shucks, it's all part of the revolution, right?

You guys are patient, I'll give you that. Very oriental. Very Maoist. All that apparent Muslim fire veils the serpentine calm center, the inner peace of the Red Dragon, right?

Cool.

Reading a guy named Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA agent. He's got a pretty good idea of your overall game plan. Johnson is a little naïve to think that all you want is what Islam wants, to get the United States out of North Africa, Turkey, Afghanistan and other Muslim communities like Macedonia, right?

And to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

How's the prayer rug, Osama? Did you take it out today? You'd better, if only to please your troops who still believe in the Arabian Nights. Humor them, okay?

It's like photo ops of Presidents at church and congressional prayer meetings. It's just part of the job.

In the States, it's only poll ratings you have to worry about.

In your neck of the woods, your life depends on your followers' blind obedience. If the world of Islam thinks you're trying to make a fool out of Allah, the next prayer rug you see could be made out of your own skin.

Islam's very grateful for the little coalition you, Hezbollah terrorist leader Imad Mughniyah and the Taliban heavy-hitters have put together for them. I mean, what was Vietnam without Ho Chi Minh and what was Ho without Mao? He would have been no Osama bin Laden, that's for sure.

I don't know if Allah's all that in love with Mao. What do you think? I'm just a Catholic, so I'm in no position to put words in the mouth of your god. But my god Yahweh liked a prophet who put the Almighty first and himself second. Mohammed did that, I think. Yeah, I'm pretty sure of that. But Mao?

Marxists just humor guys like me who mention God, but Leninist/Stalinist/Maoists? You'd better keep that "opiate" to yourself. Don't even try to pass it around. It's not like marijuana, you know.

It's so ironic that Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji -- the guys who inherited the Mao Machine -- would like to assassinate the Pope, but at the right time, of course. Nothing too precipitous.

Does Islam have a Pope? I know they had an archbishop named Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He put a contract out on writer Salmon Rushdie, didn't he? Has Islam called that off yet?

That must be scary, you know. When an Islamic pope excommunicates you, it's not just a loss of bread and wine.

How's the prayer rug, Osama?

Gee, I'm getting a strange feeling in my guts. It's the kind of thing I feel when I know God is getting really angry. The right-wing evangelists talk about it all the time, and since you've shown up at the Twin Towers, they're just screaming "I told you so" all over the place.

So Allah must be angry too, right?

The problem is, what if your Chinese friends want you and your army to drop the Allah thing? You know they haven't been too pleased with the Dalai Lama. There's no room at the Chinese Inn for him.

Well, that's a bridge you'll burn later.

Allah's on your side, so nothing else can prevail. It is written.

One million communist soldiers constitute quite a ground army, though. Throw in the flying Red Dragon Air Force and you become Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, right?

I'm just looking at the world through your eyes, Osama. I wouldn't want to miss your point of view. To me, it's like looking through the field glasses of Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox. Great military man, but a lousy judge of leadership.

You're not going to lose?

Okay.

There goes that gut feeling again. The certainty that Allah's pissed off about more than Washington, D. C.

No one likes a traitor.

My God Yahweh hates hypocrites, and both Allah and Yahweh loathe traitors. The whole universe despises traitors. That's what the black holes are for, I think. We can toss all the rat snakes down them.

How's the prayer rug, Osama?

You'd better get on it. I know it's like midnight where you are now, but I think you ought to take your heart back to Yemen where you started. Get real child-like and kneel facing the east. Ask Mohammed if he thinks you've done anything wrong.

I hear him saying, "Yes."

"What's that?," you ask.

"You convinced Islam that I'm really Mao Zedong."

I can feel you now, Osama. That's a kind of brain-numbing answer, isn't it?

"Or," continues Mohammed, "that Mao Zedong was me."

Yeah, Osama, this is getting a little unexpected.

"Osama?," asks Mohammed.

"Yes," you say, looking up quickly.

"Did you ever hear of Mao praying to Allah?"

Gee, tough question.

"Did you ever hear of communists praying to anything?"

Another tough one.

At last, you finally come up with the answer.

"We'll teach them," you say.

Now Mohammed's gone silent. He's taking a very long time to respond. Then he turns and asks, "You're going to teach them?"

You nod yes.

"Osama," he says with a smile, "I know you're the best killer Islam ever produced, but telling communists about Mohammed and Allah is something you're utterly incapable of."

"I don't have to tell them," says Osama. "They either obey or they're dead."

Another pause.

"Repeat that, please," requests Mohammed, rather firmly.

"If they don't obey, I kill them."

"Are you ready to obey me?," asks Mohammed.

Now it's your turn to pause.

"Osama?"

This pause is the real tough one, Osama. This is something you've really got to think through before you open your mouth.

Teaching obedience is not your strong suit. You've got to be the message and, except for Allah's orders to kill, you definitely have an "authority problem."

As for death, you targeted your market, did the right "networking," listened attentively to your clientele, agreed upon a delivery date, packaged the product in almost invisible Fed Ex pouches, booked this precious cargo on commercial airlines, and included personal pilots to ensure delivery at all costs.

It's pretty infuriating for Mohammed to ask you to do something that's just not in your ballpark, you say.

"I don't obey anyone," you blurt out.

After a smiling pause, Mohammed asks, "Or anything?"

"Or anything."

At this point, Mohammed nods to himself. Grows still.

Then nods again.

With that, he disappears.

The whole thing must have been something you ate, right, Osama? The lamb was a little too raw? The cous-cous a few days too old?

Shake it off, Osama. You'll have work to do tomorrow.

Decisions to make. You have a "go" to give.

Allah is hunting you, Osama.

He's sent Mohammed numerous times to hear your phone calls, read your codes, listen to your new friends, watch your ego grow and grow. He's already listed Saddam Hussein and Muammar Khaddafi as expendable. He merely waited for the big one to come, the Muslim version of Christian liberation theologists.

Allah is hunting you, Osama.

Flowering within Islam, rising from the souls of Iraqis, Iranians, Palestinians, Yemeni, Jordanians, Syrians, Turks and Afghanis is Allah's final wrath. He joins with Yahweh, god of Israel, to execute all the traitors.

No wires or bugs or espionage miracles can pick up the profound sound of Allah and Yahweh moving within the hearts of men. No human genius or digital computer can decipher the language of God within the human heart. All one can do, as a believer, is sense the flowering, the unfolding of this extraordinary act in the play of human evolution.

Allah is plumbing your depths. The fear you're now beginning to feel is only the beginning. As you shut walls between your terror and your evil missions, Allah is exuding His presence within every true Muslim. The eyes and ears of Islam are hearing their God and, with all their eyes on you, Osama, witness the clarity of their adoration begin to cloud with the smoky mists of Allah. Merely a wisp of doubt in your followers will grow to a puff of occasional anger, then a stare of growing revelation, and finally, when they again turn their eyes on you, they will see Islam's greatest traitor, Allah's most evil son, and Mohammed's certain enemy.

Where's your prayer rug, Osama?

In Beijing?

Better book a flight.

Run, Osama, run!

Fly!

Allah is hunting you.