PROJECT JAHANNAM

If you had bet $1000 on September 12, 2001 that four and a half years later there would not have been another such act of Moslem terrorism in America, with the odds the Vegas bookmakers would have given you you’d be a millionaire today.

This is not only the greatest achievement of the Bush presidency, it is the greatest mystery.  Why there hasn’t been a 9-11 repeat seems inexplicable. How has GW done it?

It could be something never mentioned or hinted at publicly, only covertly whispered into Islamist ears.  It’s called Project Jahannam.

Jahannam is the Arabic word for Islam’s Hell.  If a Moslem doesn’t go to Jannah – Heaven, the Paradise with the virgins and all – when he dies, he burns in Jahannam.

When I first heard about Project Jahannam it was discussed hypothetically.  The Pentagon intel guy I was having a drink with at the Cosmos Club in DC – we’ll call him “Larry” – asked me if I’d ever seen an old Gary Cooper movie called The Real Glory.

I answered yes and that everyone in America should see it.  Coop plays an American Army doctor, Dr. Bill Carnavan, in the Philippines in 1906.  Faced with Moslem terrorists making suicide attacks on villages American soldiers were trying to protect, he wraps a captured terrorist in a pigskin, and ends the rebellion by declaring that all killed rebels will now be buried in pigskins.  The movie was made in 1939.

Larry said that after he and some colleagues had seen it, he got to thinking about his nephew:  “He’s all into enviro causes and such.  Lives in Oregon.  He’s normal and thinks ok for the most part.  But every time he sees a jet plane’s contrail in the sky, he’s convinced the government is spraying chemicals in some nefarious experiment on us.”

And his paranoid nephew got him to thinking about biodiesel fuel.  The Senate had just passed a federal excise tax credit for biodiesel as a “cleaner-burning alternative” to pure petroleum diesel, as the bill’s sponsor Chuck Grassley (R-IA) put it.  Grassley touted biodiesel as a “renewable resource” as it’s made from soybean oil.  “There are a lot of soybeans grown in Iowa,” Larry commented.

Larry continued.  “The chemistry involved is pretty simple, a process called trans-esterification.  Soybean oil is cooked with an alcohol like methanol and a catalyst like sodium methoxide.  You distill out the water and glycerin.  This ‘esterifies’ the oil, turning it into a ‘mono-alkyl ester’ derived from the long-chain fatty acids of the oil.  This is fuel-grade biodiesel, which can be added up to 20% to petroleum diesel.  With me so far?”

I nodded, waiting for the punch line.

“This trans-esterification process works with most any kind of vegetable oil, or animal fat…”  He let those last two words float in the air.

“Animal fat?” I asked.  “You mean like…?”

“Yes,” he answered, “like lard, pig fat.”

Larry leaned forward.  “Biofuel can be made with pig fat just as easily as with soybean oil.  You can add it to any kind of petroleum fuel – gasoline for cars, diesel for trucks, jet fuel for airplanes.  If the manufacture of large quantities of pig fat biofuel were arranged, and mixed into the jetfuel supplies used by most of the world’s airlines, then…”  He paused for me to get the picture.

“Then the world’s breathable atmosphere,” I said, “would be permeated with molecules of pig fat.”

“Precisely” he said.  “Now, pig fat molecules are virtually indistinguishable from human fat molecules, so there’s no physical harm.  The molecules would be absorbed through the lungs and incorporated into the fat cells of one’s body.  Harmless to us, but for any Moslem, his body would be ineradicably, irretrievably polluted with pigs.  The gates of heaven are forever closed to him.  Mohammed himself would spit at them if they tried to enter.  At least, that’s what a lot of Moslem crazies would believe.”

Warming to his subject, Larry speculated how easy it would be to make deals with various oil refineries to use a “special experimental” biofuel, paying them well for adding it to their refined fuel products and never revealing of course the biofuel was from pig fat.  They would even have charcoal-filtered the pig fat biofuel to take out any aroma.

Just as easy for these guys would be to introduce the refined product into jetfuel supplies for international airlines.  It wouldn’t take long for airliners flying across the planet to permeate the troposphere with “JPs” – Jahannam Particles.

The troposphere is the air we breathe, the layer of air from the ground to 24-28,000 feet.  While the JPs would remain suspended in the stratosphere for months, they would be in the troposphere for weeks. That’s enough time with airliners spraying pig fat exhaust into the world’s air to get JPs lodged in the fat cells of every Moslem alive.

“Jack, do you have any idea how many Moslems are like my nephew in Oregon?” Larry asked.  “If they thought Project Jahannam was true, they’d convince themselves they are haram (polluted) because the paranoia of their beliefs won’t let them think otherwise.”

“OK,” I said.  “This is all very cool, albeit hypothetically cool.  But what’s the point?  Such a project would cost a lot of money.  What would it accomplish?”

“Total demoralization of the enemy,” came his reply.  “No more shahid (martyr) suicide bombers blowing themselves up as a ticket to whorehouse heaven.  Using the enemy’s beliefs as a weapon against him – using the strengths of those beliefs to destroy him. The enemy knowing we can do this to him, kick him in the balls of his soul.  The enemy knowing we will do this to him if he attacks us again.”

Well, that was two years ago – two more years during which America has not been attacked.  Maybe it’s because the Jihadis are preoccupied in Iraq, maybe its because we’ve been hunting them down and quietly liquidating them.

But maybe also because of the fear that Project Jahannam has become less than hypothetical, that significant amounts of “special experimental biofuel” have now been refined and are ready to be introduced into airline jetfuel supplies on a moment’s notice.

“If such a fear makes Moslem terrorists hesitate, injects doubt that they and their fellow Moslems just might be rejected at heaven’s gate, then Project Jahannam will have served its purpose as a form of ultimate deterrence,” says Larry.

“When it comes to religion, Jack, there is no difference between what is true and what people think is true,” he explains.  “After all, the War on Terrorism is essentially a psychological war.”