Fond Memories of Operation: Nicaraguan Freedom by Juan Jose Mercado, Sandinista, born 1960 - died 1984

As I watch Operation: Iraqi Freedom unfold, my joy for the heretofore oppressed Iraqi people is mixed with a healthy dose of nostalgia, for I too was once a victim of such oppression before being released from my mortal body and gaining my freedom. Immersed in a realm of eternal luminous light and soothing vibration, I perceive through the eleven dimensions with consummate joy my kindred spirits becoming emancipated from their prisons of bone and flesh by the searing hot metal of bullets and bombs of the merciful mediators of ultimate liberation. God bless the United States and her militant imperialism that sets us truly free!

Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t always think this way. Not by a long shot. When I was a soldier in the Sandinista Army, the only thing I despised more than the illegitimate, corrupt and despotic Samoza empire that ruled my homeland Nicaragua with an iron fist, denying basic human rights and economic opportunity to all but those belonging to the capitalist upper class, was the American government for supporting it and enabling it to do so with the weapons it sold. In fact, after we toppled the Somoza regime in 1979 and the CIA attacked our ports, mined our harbors and began to subsidize the counterrevolutionary Contra army, leading to an interminable civil war that, besides killing thousands, stunted our egalitarian new government in its infancy by forcing it to allocate half of its annual national budget to fighting, I knew nothing but unbridled hatred for America. But alas, my hatred for their selfishness and arrogance was all in mortal ignorance. For instance, I admit with boundless humiliation that my enmity for the great and magnanimous United States nearly boiled over on the day my son was abducted from me and killed during a fishing excursion on Lago de Nicaragua, while I had my back turned digging for bait. The last I saw of him was a trail of blood through the jungle that vanished after a half of a kilometer. Dizzy with terror, I returned to my home to enlist the help of my wife and neighbors only to have my fright amplified when the muzzle of an American M-16 rifle was jammed violently into my back by a Contra soldier hidden behind the door. In my stupidity, I prayed for the greatest of miseries to befall America, the perceived source of my torment, as I outwardly begged and cried for the six men, who were busy raping my wife, to spare our lives. Little did I know they were doing us a great favor! But I beg your pardon! I was blind to the nature of real freedom; I thought that real freedom could be found on Earth. How silly. What a dummy I was! Now I know firsthand that real freedom can only be attained in the afterlife, where, as an quanta of amorphous energy, I am free to explore the spiritual realm in a state of sheer, ethereal bliss.