The Search for Pajama On Llama Continues!

The Onion ran a great story this week about the U.S. government's failure to make sure that capturing Osama Bin Laden in a priority. The article, "U.S. Government: We Have Not Forgotten About Osaka Bin Rogen" jibes the military for forgetting about Bin Laden. Indeed, each U.S. leader has a different name for him: Osaka Binn Rogen, Owanda Bun Luvin, Pajama On Llama, Okenny Ben Loggens and Oggie Ring Quabben. They also refer to the Taliban as the "Tallywhacker" and al Qaeda as "La Tostada" among other names.

The satire here is pretty clear: Osama has fallen so far off the radar that no one can even remember his name anymore. Whether the writer is calling for a greater focus to be placed on finding Osama, pointing out the futility in trying to catch him, or simply showing the incompetence of American leaders is irrelevant. The point is that we are certainly not going about this the right way.

The article ends on a potshot at Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who says he hasn't seen Osama in a while, but he'll let him now we're looking for him next time he does. It's definitely significant that Karzai is the only person in the article who gets Osama's name right. You have to be in Bin Laden's inner circle to know where he is, and knowing the name of a place or a person is equivalent to knowing that place or person in this article. For example, Afghanistan is listed as "Afbanardstan" on a map. If Karzai knows Osama's real name, we know who he's really working for.