CIA Chief: We'll Kill All Terrorists Twice

CIA Chief Michael Hayden told a hastily assembled Langley, Virginia press conference that he has solved the problem of punishing terrorists who aren’t afraid to die by committing to “kill them twice.”

“The first time they die,” Hayden explained, “that’s based on their desire for martyrdom, 70 virgins, the whole nine yards. But if we catch them, even if they’re dead, we’ll kill them a second time, as punishment and as a deterrent to others.”

Hayden said the CIA had spent “millions of dollars of resources and millions of person-hours” in order to come up with “this highly ingenious solution to a vexing problem. I mean, the problem with terrorists is that they don’t mind dying. They’re probably disappointed if they don’t die, because then they have to be imprisoned, stand trial, and be an embarrassment to family and friends. So it’s tough to find a way to punish people who don’t mind dying.

“But if we kill them a second time,” Hayden said, “that’s a very special punishment and we think they’ll be extremely afraid of that happening. Kill me once, shame on me, kill me twice, or, um, however that thing goes.”

When reporters asked Hayden whether the CIA had worked out a “mechanism” for killing dead people for a second time, he responded, “To be honest, not yet. We have our best people working on that problem, from a technical and logistical standpoint. So we don’t have a means of actually implementing the solution yet, but we’ll get one soon.

“In the meantime, the American people can rest assured that a double-dead terrorist is never going to bother them a second time.”