PARIS: A French submarine repairing a sea-bed communications cable linking Oman and Pakistan stumbled upon a grisly find last week — the decayed head of Osama bin Laden.
Egyptian crewmen aboard noted a ragged fringe of beard on the jawbone, asserting that it had to be skull of bin Laden, whose body was dumped in these waters after the Navy SEAL raid on Abbottabad. Following Islamic custom, they demanded that it be returned to its watery grave. But Captain Giscard Cousteau, sensing a profitable windfall in the historic find, intended to take it to a top forensics lab in Marseille for positive identification. A bloody melee for possession of the find broke out.
“It was like one of those crazy NFL fumbles that go on for, like, 20 yards, with a dozen change of possessions,” said American crewman Josh Hinterlast. “Using soccer kicks, the frogs finally punted it into a gear hatch and locked it up with a 24-7 armed guard. The jawbone was knocked off and holes poked in the top.”
But the damaged skull would never reach Marseilles. After Captain Cousteau’s excited radio message to base was intercepted by the NSA, Navy SEAL Team Six was dispatched to take back the skull in an armed raid just after the sub transited the Suez Canal. On board the U.S.S. Vincennes, the SEALs were gripped by an acute sense of déjà vu as the skull was dropped on the deck. One SEAL spat into an eye socket, growling, “Happy to see us again, sand chimp? Sorry to disturb your nap with the fishes.” The skull was then pulverized in a garbage grinder and scattered over the Mediterranean.
Captain Cousteau is angry and disconsolate. “They completely violated the laws of salvage in international waters,” he said. “A DNA test could have proven it was bin Laden after all. Some say that it was not him, but his body double killed in Abbottabad. We never saw even photos. It would have made a great addition to the Louvre. Did they really have to make hummus powder of it?”
But Navy Admiral Jared Widewake defended the extraordinary action: “We in the Pentagon have all undergone a lot of diversity training in the last few years, and I got to tell you, it’s really sunk in. Senior officers were all outraged at this criminal desecration of a Muslim grave. We just couldn’t let it stand. Yeah, Osama was a bad guy, but all creeds and colors deserve to rest in peace. That’s our creed — never harming or insulting Muslims and Arabians.