Dear Concerned Citizen:

Thank you for your recent letter roundly criticizing our treatment of the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. My administration takes these matters seriously, and your opinion was heard loud and clear here in Washington. You’ll be pleased to learn that, thanks to the concerns of citizens like you, we are creating a new division of the Terrorist Retraining Program, to be called the “Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers” program, or lark for short.

In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have decided to place one terrorist under your personal care. Your personal detainee has been selected and scheduled for transportation under heavily armed guard to your residence next Monday. He is to be cared for pursuant to the standards you personally demanded in your letter of admonishment. It will likely be necessary for you to hire some assistant caretakers.

We will conduct weekly inspections to ensure that your standards of care for him are commensurate with those you so strongly recommended in your letter. His meal requirements are simple, but we strongly suggest serving meals that do not require utensils, particularly knives and forks.

Please heed the large orange notice attached to your detainee’s cage: “Does not play well with others.” Although he is a sociopath and extremely violent, we hope that your sensitivity to what you described as his “attitudinal problem” will help him overcome these character flaws. Perhaps you are correct in describing these problems as mere cultural differences. He will bite you, given the chance, but his last rabies test came back negative so do not worry.

We understand that you plan to offer counseling and home schooling. Your adopted terrorist is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand combat and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil or nail clippers. We do not suggest that you ask him to demonstrate these skills at your next yoga group. He is also expert at making a wide variety of explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish to keep those items locked up, unless (in your opinion) this might offend him.

Thanks again for your letter. We truly appreciate it when folks like you—who know so much—keep us informed of the proper way to do our job. We think this watching over each other’s shoulder is such a good way for people to interact that we will be sending a team of federal officials with expertise in your line of work to your place of business soon, just to help you do your job better. Don’t be concerned that they have the power to close your business, seize your property, and arrest you for any violation of the 4,850,206 federal laws, codes, regulations and rules that apply to your profession. They’re really there just to make sure you're doing everything the proper way. That is what you wanted, right? Well, thank you for this opportunity to interact with such a valued member of the citizenry. You take good care of your assigned terrorist. And remember, we’ll be watching.

Cordially,

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