Waterboarding Survival Classes Cancelled by Al-Qaeda

AFGHAN-PAKISTANI BORDER — Al-Qaida anounced on Monday it will be terminating its Waterboarding Survival course, which has been offered to its members since 9/11.

According to a press release distributed by the terror organization, the training program is no longer necessary now that President Obama has officially prohibited the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Ali Mashu-Bitzu, a twenty-year-old al-Qaida Lieutenant, had been taking the classes for over a year. “It’s a sad day,” said Mashu-Bitzu, who speaks in short sentences, gasping for breath between every word or two. “I will miss my classmates. We have shared countless hours of sheer panic and horror throughout our training. I would have graduated next Thursday.”

The daily curriculum, adopted from the CIA handbook and various Bush administration legal documents, consisted of students being tied to an inclined board and blindfolded, as an instructor released gallons of water over their heads for up to two hours — sometimes using water contaminated with human waste or malaria.

“If a student would cry or plead for the procedure to stop,” noted Mashu-Bitzu, “he would undergo beheading.”

With waterboarding banned in the United States, it is doubtful the popular course will ever be reinstated.  “We started off with over three-hundred students,” said Mashu-Bitzu, reaching into his pocket for an asthma inhalor.  “The six of us who remain are the strong ones.”  He sat down on a nearby rock, sprayed the medication into his mouth and took a deep breath.

Mashu-Bitzu said he has turned his disappointment into anger at Americans.  “We will make them pay for the closing down of our waterboarding school.”  He stood up to emphasize his point, but immediately lost his balance and staggered into a tree trunk.

“They could have waterboarded me until the camels came home,” he bragged, pausing momentarily to cough a bloody phlegmball from his lungs.  “They would have gotten nothing.”