WASHINGTON (UPI) Flanked by grim-faced G Men and forensic gynecologists, Attorney General John Ashcroft today announced the latest threat from the Middle East, which he called "the worst since last week's exploding teddy bears."

"The American people—-some of them, anyway—-will be threatened sometime by personal hygiene products designed for women that have been modified to contain explosives." Press conference participants reported that the Attorney General appeared to grow redder and redder as he spoke and eventually had to be assisted from the podium

An FBI spokesman took his place to describe a "credible threat" mined from the hard drive of a computer seized in an Afghan "terrorist treasure trove" describing two types of what from an over-literal translation from the Arabic seems to be "pussy bombs."

Threat Rooted in Religion, Psychosis

While most mainstream Muslims accept and even embrace the entry of women into civil society, Osama bin-Laden is an adherent of the fringe al-Habubu movement, whose central teaching on feminism is that women are "receptacles of lust unless she's your mother." In strict al-Habubu communities, menstruating women are clubbed and whipped through the streets by their male in-laws to be locked in the "sinful cunt house" where they are ritually mocked until certified clean by the blinded and tongueless widows who administer the facility. Needless to say, al-Habubu clerics periodically, so to speak, denounce the West as "the place where women suffering from evidence of their inherent inferiority are given penis-like cylinders to fill their unspeakable lower parts." (A phrase which, in Arabic, is a single two-syllable word.) Thus, al-Habubu founder, the eleventh-century Murad the Blessed (also known as Murad the Mad) remarked that: "A woman's privates would be a great place for high explosives, if and when the infidels get around to inventing them."

Two types of bombs

The engineers of 9/11 were swift to exploit what they thought was the chink in the West's armor. According to FBI sources, "sleeper" cells have crept into all-night drugstores to purchase hundreds of boxes of tampons which are then surreptitiously returned to the shelves with blasting caps fitted to their business ends. One source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while no such "pussy bomb" has ever been found, experiments conducted on cadavers had shown that the weapon "gave a whole new meaning to PMS."

Far worse, however, is the device designed for the new breed of female Middle Eastern suicide bombers: A quarter stick of dynamite wrapped in lubricated absorbent cotton with a fuse trailing from its base. More than enough, according to the FBI, to blow a 747 out of the sky.

A Federal official offered this stern warning: "If you're on a plane and a Middle Eastern woman is holding a match to her snatch, call a flight attendant." He paused and dropped his voice. "Pronto."