Bin Laden Sports ‘I Love Guantanamo’ T-Shirt

Travelers on the metro in the Washington DC risk coming facing to face with Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, smiling and wearing an “I Love Guantanamo” T-shirt.

The irreverent billboard image of America’s number one enemy, just a short distance from the White House, is part of an activist campaign aimed at highlighting that Al-Qaeda uses the US detention center as a recruiting tool.

The metro billboard is “to remind policymakers that torture is illegal, unethical and a top recruiting tool for the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network,” creators from the Avaaz activist group said.

Avaaz believes Guantanamo is a potent symbol for the “war on terror” torture excesses of former President George W. Bush and that Al-Qaeda plays on this fact to pull in new members.

Another poster presents former vice-president Dick Cheney, who has ardently defended the controversial interrogation techniques of the Bush-era, begging the question: “Could this be Al-Qaeda’s best recruiter?”

President Barack Obama, who has vowed to shut the camp by January, is shown in a third poster, looking pensive, alongside a slogan from his inauguration speech: “We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”

The advertisement campaign aimed at shutting the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is being run at Farragut North metro station, one of the closest to the White House, and in the Washington Post daily newspaper.

Defense Secretary Rober Gates said that the complexities of trying to re-house the 223 inmates still at Guantanamo meant it was “going to be tough” to meet Obama’s January 22 deadline for the camp’s closure.

Chicken Owner Shoots Himself While Hunting Opossum

A northwest Washington man is recovering after accidentally shooting himself in the leg while hunting an opossum that had been snatching his chickens.

Larry Tenbrink of Mount Vernon was watching TV when he heard his chickens “carrying on” late on afternoon.  He figured the problem was the opossum that had already killed more than a dozen of his chickens over the past few months.

Tenbrink grabbed his .22 caliber pistol, headed outside and spotted an opossum the size of a large cat wandering his property. But he accidentally pulled the trigger too early, sending a bullet through his lower right thigh.

The 61-year-old handyman told the Skagit Valley Herald that he’s back home after a trip to the hospital. And though the opossum is free for now, he’ll be hunting it again.  But next time, he says he’ll use a trap.

Loose Lip Biden Outdoes Himself

Vice President Joe Biden, well-known for his verbal gaffes, may have finally outdone himself, divulging potentially classified information meant to save the life of a sitting vice president.

According to a report, while recently attending the Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, an annual event where powerful politicians and media elite get a chance to cozy up to one another, Biden told his dinnermates about the existence of a secret bunker under the old U.S. Naval Observatory, which is now the home of the vice president.

The bunker is believed to be the secure, undisclosed location former Vice President Dick Cheney remained under protection in secret after the 9/11 attacks.

Eleanor Clift, Newsweek magazine’s Washington contributing editor, said Biden revealed the location while filling in for President Obama at the dinner, who, along with Grover Cleveland, is the only president to skip the gathering.

According to Clift’s report on the Newsweek blog, Biden “said a young naval officer giving him a tour of the residence showed him the hideaway, which is behind a massive steel door secured by an elaborate lock with a narrow connecting hallway lined with shelves filled with communications equipment.” 

Clift continued: “The officer explained that when Cheney was in lock down, this was where his most trusted aides were stationed, an image that Biden conveyed in a way that suggested we shouldn’t be surprised that the policies that emerged were off the wall.”