Al-Qaeda's Number Four Promoted to Number Three

ISLAMABAD —  After the United States announced the killing of al-Qaeda’s “Number Three” leader, Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman Abu al-Yazid, the organization quickly named a successor.

Sibghatullah “James” Ahmadahzai will assume the “Number Three” moniker, effective immediately.

72 of the previous “Number Threes” have been killed by the United States.

Ahmadahzai, who had served five years as Director of Human Resources for the international terror organization, had initially declined the promotion, informing Osama bin Laden that he really enjoyed being “Number Four.”

“Really, it’s okay with me,” Ahmadahzai is reported to have told the al-Qaeda chief. “Perhaps Number Five would be a better candidate. He puts in fourteen hours a day and has no life.”

But after the body of his brother was recovered from the bowels of an ibex in Jalalabad, Ahmadahzai reconsidered, saying he was “honored” to receive the promotion.

“I look forward to earning the trust placed in me by the entire al-Qaeda organization,” Ahmadahzai wrote on his Twitter page, “and to being killed by a CIA drone sometime next week.”