the Wired Press > Archives

Al Qaeda operative Abdul Al Shakra sits watching the news in his Miami studio apartment wondering if he will ever find work again. "Look at this, " he says pointing at the TV, "100 people dead in a club in Rhode Island. I was going to bomb that club. I had planned it for two months. Now, what am I going to do?"

Shakra is the first to admit that maybe Al Qaeda's terrorist attacks have gone a little too well.

"I planned for a month to pump serin gas into the ventilation system of a club in Chicago, but the night before the people mistook a security guards pepper spray for a chemical attack. They stampeded and killed 22 people all by themselves. I just can't get a break."

A recent report by Forrester Research has shown that the terrorism industry has seen their market share shrink dramatically in the last year at an average rate of 13.7% per month. Although recent tragedies have been attributed to Darwinism, many experts also blame the Federal Government.

"It is very difficult to compete with the Federal Government. Sure, I could blow up a school bus or a plane, but that doesn't even compare to the government issuing vague and mysterious color coded warnings and telling people to buy duct tape because of potential gas attacks. It is an unfair competitive advantage - how can I compete with that!"

According to Shakra, an exasperated Al Qaeda is at a loss as to how to make the US economy any worse.

"Every time we come up with a good idea, Bush steals it. We know he taps our phones and reads our email. We just want some credit for some of our original ideas. This whole 'war thing' was my idea! We went to a lot of trouble to try and drag Iraq into this thing to distract the American people, decimate the stock market and cause fuel prices to rise; thereby crippling interstate commerce. It is a brilliant plan and Bush stole it from us. I am very upset."

- Clark Brandon