by Willie Geist
Many of the enemy combatants collapsed on the field in disbelief as they watched their guards celebrate a United States win whose impact was felt around the globe. A fatwa was issued on Khan effective immediately after the game.
“I never had a good handle on the ball,” said Khan in the losing locker room. “I let my fellow suspected terrorists down. What can you say at a time like this, except, you know, death to America.”
The football game billed as “The Battle on the Bay” drew the eyes of the world after it was announced by the United States Justice Department early this year as the official means by which the fate of prisoners held at U.S. Naval Station Guantánamo Bay would be decided. Attorney General Eric Holder was quoted at the time as saying, “We’ve been going back and forth on what to do with these people for years. To be perfectly honest, we just plumb ran out of ideas. So we’re gonna do this Longest Yard–style: inmates versus guards. Detainees win, they’re free to go. Guards win, we hang on to the terrorists for a while. Excuse me, ‘suspected’ terrorists. Whatever.”
Amnesty International and the ACLU, among many other groups, have decried the Justice Department’s decision to settle the hotly debated question of the handling of detainees at Guantánamo Bay with a game of American-style football.
“Are you shitting me?” an ACLU spokesman said last month in a statement. “Many of these victims have been held at Guantánamo for nearly a decade without any charge at all. And now, instead of giving them lawyers, we’re giving them a football game to win their freedom? This is an outrage and yet another blow to America’s reputation around the world.
“At a minimum we would like a more international sport, like soccer, to be used, in the interest of fairness, as the determining competition. Or better yet, buzkashi, the traditional Central Asian game where players on horseback pick up the headless carcass of a goat and carry it across a goal line for points.”
For 60 minutes on this crisp fall Saturday in southeastern Cuba though, none of the arguments made in the ivory towers of American universities, the think tanks of Washington, or the halls of The Hague meant a thing. In between the white lines at Donald H. Rumsfeld Stadium at Gitmo, it was not the Geneva Accords but the law of the jungle that applied. One team fighting for its freedom. The other standing in the way.
The game was pure bloodsport, but it was surrounded by all the dazzling pageantry one would expect from an international spectacle of this magnitude. Burt Reynolds, the star of the original 1974 film The Longest Yard, presided over the ceremonial coin toss. American Idol’s season-three winner Fantasia Barrino belted out a stirring rendition of the National Anthem just before kickoff. A one-day moratorium on “walling” and waterboarding was called as the naval base at Guantánamo stood still.
The MPs, all of whose names have been redacted from this game summary by the United States Department of Defense, opened the game with a balanced drive, punctuated by a fourteen-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Lt. Col. to his favorite target, tight end Capt. , that gave the MPs an early 7–0 lead. It was a sign of things to come in a dominant first half that saw the Guards take a commanding 21–0 lead into the halftime locker room.
As Toby Keith and the Jonas Brothers performed under a shower of fireworks on the field outside, FOX Sports cameras picked up part of the impassioned speech delivered by head coach Fazel Mazloom, the IED expert known as “Maz-Boom!,” to his dejected Detainees.
“They say you’re ‘the worst of the worst.’ And, you know what, maybe they’re right. Maybe you are the worst. Maybe you don’t deserve to be on the same field as the infidels over in that other locker room. Maybe we oughta just throw up the white flag right now, go back to our cells, and wait to die.
“I’ll go tell the rear admiral over there that we’re quitters. I’ll tell him we’ve had enough. And someday, if we ever get out of here, you can tell your children you didn’t have what it took to stand up to the Great Satan.
“But I’m not ready to do that, goddamn it! And when I make the declaration to damn god, I mean their ‘Christian’ God, obviously! This is a Holy War, gentlemen! A clash of civilizations! This is your one chance to fight back! Let’s get out there and beat these assholes so we can return to our native countries to resume terrorist activities, as opponents of the closing of this detention facility suspect we will! Can I get an ‘Allahu Akbar!’ up in this motherfucker?! Let me hear it! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Let’s go!!!”
Mazloom admitted later that he’d lifted portions of the speech from John Goodman’s address to the Alpha Beta football players in Revenge of the Nerds. “How great is that movie?” Mazloom asked a reporter.
The Fightin’ Detainees responded immediately to their coach’s rousing speech, marching down the field on their captors to ring up a quick score right out of the locker room. They were flagged 15 yards for unsportsmanlike conduct when they pulled out prayer mats and prayed to Mecca in an orchestrated touchdown celebration. Mazloom said later, “I’ll take that penalty. I love the enthusiasm. And so does Allah, by the way.”
After dominating the Detainees in the first half, the Guards’ offense went inexplicably dormant in the game’s second 30 minutes. Quarterback Lt. Col. , a high school star from , Alabama, threw for 312 yards and 3 touchdowns, but he also gave up a pair of interceptions to Coach Mazloom’s opportunistic defense. The second came with 5:41 left in the fourth quarter, when his receiver, First Sgt. , slipped on a crossing route, allowing ball-hawking Detainee safety and suspect in the kidnapping and torture of the families of Pakistani judges, Zafar Iqbal to step in front and return the pass for an easy touchdown, cutting the Guards’ lead to 31–28. The Americans were stunned.
“ and I got crossed up on that play. I probably shouldn’t have thrown it,” Lt. Col. said after the game. “That terrorist dude was in the right place at the right time. Hell, Saddam Hussein could have made that interception, and, as you know, he’s dead.”
After another stalled drive by the Guards, the Detainees would get the ball back one final time, trailing by that 31–28 margin with less than two minutes to play. Quarterback Raza was a picture of cool as he led his enemy combatants on the 86-yard march to freedom. Running the two-minute drill to perfection, Raza found Abdullah Al Yafii on consecutive first-down throws, the second bringing the Detainees to the Guards’ three-yard line with 19 seconds to play.
What happened next will be the source of debate for generations in sports bars from Khartoum to Karbala, and Kabul to Casablanca. With the game hanging in the balance, Coach Mazloom called for a running play, despite the success of his passing game throughout the second half. The dastardly Raza turned and handed the ball to the militant Khan just as he’d done a thousand times before, but this time disaster struck. Khan took three steps and fumbled, the ball falling to the turf seemingly in slow motion. After a scrum, Army PFC jumped from the pile with the ball raised high. The American sideline erupted in celebration. The game was over. The Detainees were put in leg shackles and returned to their cells.
“Yeah, I decided to run a little draw there. We still had a time-out if we didn’t punch it in and our jihadist coaches upstairs saw something they liked in that defensive set,” Coach Mazloom said after the game. “We just couldn’t hold on to the football. In the end, this epic struggle of civilizations came down to fundamental football.”
The quarterback Raza caused a stir in the locker room when he second-guessed the coach’s decision to run the ball with the game on the line.
“I’ve been killing their defense all day like I’m the Messenger of Allah at the Battle of Badr, for Christ’s sake, and all of a sudden we decide we’re going to run the ball?” said a visibly frustrated Raza. “I don’t get it, man. I don’t get it. You have to ask who Coach Mazloom’s really working for here. All I can say at this point is, death to the infidels. No more questions.”
The Guards of the 525th Military Police Battalion at U.S. Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, escaped with a narrow 31–28 v
ictory, keeping the enemy combatants at the detention facility indefinitely and settling a question that had sparked emotional debate around the world. The President of the United States, Barack Obama, released a statement after the game.
“I am pleased with the effort of our men and women in uniform in today’s game,” Obama wrote in the statement. “With their uniquely American fight, determination, and persistence, these brave soldiers have, once and for all, taken the onus off me to make a decision on this vitally important issue. For that I am eternally grateful because, seriously, I had no clue what to do on this one. Whew.
“I’m also very pleased to have won my friendly bet with Osama bin Laden. I didn’t want to have to part with all that Gino’s Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. The month’s supply of lamb kebabs is gonna taste a little extra sweet with this win. You’ve got the address, OBL.”
The Al-Qaeda leader bin Laden was less gracious in an audiotape released after the game.
“That was some bullshit out there today!” said an emotional bin Laden. “How much did Obama pay those refs? Those two pass interference calls were both uncatchable balls! Next time just let me know the game is fixed beforehand so I don’t waste four hours watching a lie. I had an entire ‘Battle on the Bay’ theme party in my cave for no reason. The place is a mess and I’m up to my ears in guacamole! And don’t hold your breath on the kebabs, Obama. Boy, am I steamed.”
Bin Laden’s frustration with the officiating notwithstanding, the Detainees’ surprisingly competitive performance on Saturday earned unlikely praise from their mortal enemies.
“I think the extremists, militants, and outright terrorists over there won a measure of respect with their effort today,” said Guards head coach Navy Rear Admiral . “We expected them to roll over like the whiny little bitches they are, but they didn’t. It’s especially impressive when you consider we didn’t allow them to wear football equipment. Just the turbans and flowing robes. Those guys put up a heck of a fight. Doesn’t mean I’m not throwing ’em all into stress positions first thing tomorrow, but we’ll certainly give ’em the night off.”
The Detainees may have come up three yards short of freedom, but for just one bright afternoon on a breezy open field of fresh-cut green grass somewhere in the Caribbean, they were free to dream.
“This is a tough loss to swallow because we were so close. We allowed ourselves to think about life on the other side of that chain-link fence and it cost us,” said the star receiver and bloodthirsty Yemeni radical Al Yafii. “No words will make it better. I mean, the words ‘Death to America’ always help, but this still stings. It’ll just take time, which we’ve got plenty of now. On the bright side, how cool was it to meet Burt Reynolds? I’m a huge Smokey and the Bandit fan.”
Chapter 10
Oprah Is God
Since the very beginning of human history, scientists, philosophers, scholars, clerics, and just guys sitting around in bars have debated the existence of God. Now, a group of prominent American theologians has rocked the religious world with a new study that, they say, proves a higher power exists. So who, or what, is God and how can the authors of this potentially earth-shaking new research be so sure? They make their case in the latest edition of the quarterly academic journal Harvard Theological Review.
HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Harvard Divinity School
Cambridge, Massachusetts
“GOD IS OPRAH, OPRAH IS GOD”
Nearly a decade ago, a group of us were sitting around the faculty lounge at the Harvard Divinity School smoking clove cigarettes, drinking brandy, and talking about how frustratingly dumb most people are when a spirited argument broke out over the existence of God. We vowed that night, inside the walls of a smoke-filled room in Cambridge, that together we would author the definitive study on the subject. We also ended up taking some mescaline and playing a dangerous Tantric sex game with the folks in the Sanskrit and Indian Studies Department, but that is not germane to this report.
No matter how long it took us, we decided we would leave our mark as the mere mortals who answered humanity’s oldest supernatural question: Is there a God? Today, after nine years of exhaustive research, we are proud and humbled to say that we have the answer.
God has been described over the course of human history as an intangible overseer of the universe. According to our findings, that characterization is only half true. God is omnipotent, but not intangible. In fact, God is a being of flesh and blood. God walks among us. God, you might be surprised to learn, has a talk show.
This study makes two important conclusions: 1) Yes, there is a God, and 2) God is Oprah Winfrey. Said another way, Oprah is God. Can you believe it?! Just let that wash over you for a moment. Oprah Winfrey is God. Shocking at first, but then kind of starts to make sense, right?
Oprah Winfrey has been a visible public figure for only the last 25 years, but our research shows She has been present for, and decisive in, everything that has ever happened in the history of the world. From the Big Bang to the Great War to every Miss Universe Pageant, Oprah’s hand has been there pulling the strings and setting history on its course.
Trust me, we’ve heard all the old smug jokes about Oprah being “God,” but this is not a joke. This is science. We have volumes of evidence that prove our case (the full report, as well as a variety of official Oprah Is God merchandise, can be found at our new flash website www.OprahIsGod.com, accessible for the low introductory price of $29.95/month).
So how did we get here? Our academic curiosity was piqued long ago by Oprah’s peculiar power to influence human wants, needs, and purchasing habits. We wondered what kind of Supreme Being could cause grown women to hyperventilate at the simple mention of Her favorite top-load washer/dryer set? We struggled with the idea that a mere mortal could command an entire nation to buy and read books of Her choosing. And we doubted that someone who is not a deity would have the stones to put Herself on every cover of Her own magazine.
As we observed Oprah more closely, it became clear that She was leaving clues to Her true identity. She wanted to tell someone Her secret. It was our job as theologians to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Did that sound like something from The Da Vinci Code? I hope so. I wanted it to.
Nine long years of dissecting the ancient religious texts, of visiting the world’s holiest sites, and of poring over back issues of O! magazine confirmed our suspicion and proved our theory beyond a shadow of a doubt. The pieces fit. There was no longer any scientifically plausible way to deny that Oprah Winfrey is God.
Oprah declined to be interviewed for our study, but when presented with the case made by the Harvard Divinity School, She confirmed in a formal letter that She is, in fact, God.
* * *
OPRAH WINFREY
HARPO PRODUCTIONS
Chicago, IL
Dean and Senior Faculty
Harvard Divinity School
Cambridge, MA 02138
Dear God Squad,
BUSTED! Yes, I am God. Guilty as charged. Congrats on cracking the code (finally). Look under your seat: you’ve won a new car! JK. You guys and Gayle are the only ones who know. I haven’t even told Stedman (I know, so bad, right?). I’ve got to say it feels pretty good to finally say it out loud. I am God! I am God! Wait, that sounds totally conceited. But you know what they say: it’s not braggin’ if it’s true.
To be perfectly honest with you all, I’m a little ticked by the timing of your study because I was planning to do a big reveal on my show next month with Maya Angelou and Dr. Oz. I guess I’ll just tell you now: we were going to pretend to tell Maya that Dr. Oz had a miracle treatment for her chronic arthritis and then instead: Surprise! I’m God! Can you imagine the look on Maya Angelou’s face?! Would have been hilarious. With all due respect, the Harvard Theological Review wasn’t quite the venue I had in mind to let the world know I am the Supreme Being. We were going to shut down Times Square for the announcement, have the Black Eyed Peas play, and give every pe
rson in the world a Bath & Body Works gift basket, but you got the scoop. I tip my cap. Talk about an “Aha!” moment for you guys, huh?
I don’t have time to go through the whole story, but I’ll try to answer some of your questions. Truthfully, I don’t use words like “omnipotent,” “divine,” or “all-knowing.” Those are labels others put on Me. If people want to capitalize pronouns when they talk about Me and fall to their knees when they address Me, that’s up to them. It’s not something I ever asked for. Between you and Me, I find it a little weird.
First things first: there’s no such thing as polytheism, my friends. We can just put that to bed right now. I’m the only God. Sure, there are self-proclaimed “gods” out there, but it’s like a philosophy PhD who wants to be called “doctor.” If you can’t take out my spleen, you ain’t a doctor there, Kierkegaard. Same thing with gods. Everyone knows the real deal: there’s Me and then there’s everybody else.
Hey, can I clear up one thing? And please put this in your study. The Ten Commandments? Not Me. Moses was freelancing on that one. If I need a job done right, I don’t outsource it. Don’t get Me wrong, Mo blew up the spot on Mt. Sinai—the hand stonework on the tablets alone must have cost him a fortune—but I wasn’t behind it. He went rogue. You see, I’m not one of these Gods who needs credit for everything. I mean, I control the tides of the planet’s oceans and you don’t see Me running around like My hair’s on fire correcting people who claim the moon dictates tidal patterns.
I’m going to have to run into makeup in a minute here. I’ve got a woman backstage with a condition that turns her feet into pigs’ hooves after sundown. She and her husband are coming on to talk about their ordeal. Now here’s the hell of it: I’m God. I probably gave her that freaky disease. You start to lose track. And now I have to sit there and watch her cry about it. The guilt gets to you sometimes. Thank God I’ve got Kate Hudson for the second half of the show to cleanse the palate! Wait, did I just thank myself?! Anyway, let me dive into a few more of your questions before I split.