Commander David Culpepper has finally taken decisive action to shut down the US Naval Base on Cuban soil, Guantanamo Bay, affectionately nicknamed GTMO. For decades, GTMO remained a favorite spot for the US to hold military prisoners and unlawful combatants from Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries targeted during the “War on Terror.” While this may seem like a move in the right direction, according to recent condemnation from human rights groups, they are in fact moving prisoners into worse conditions.
Though the charges of torture include beatings, humiliating acts, prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures or loud noises, cruel, degrading treatment, and more, none of it compares to the horror these prisoners are soon to face: IKEA.
The CIA and Department of Defense have jointly agreed that buying out a failing IKEA megastore in Bolingbrook, Illinois to house the remaining terror suspects is more cost effective and equally as horrifying as the GTMO base. The prisoners will stumble around a neutral-colored, Scandinavian, building-equivalent-of-a-junk-drawer for the foreseeable future, waking from their constant confusion-derived-fatigue only to assemble intricate IKEA furniture: the ultimate punishment.
The Punch Bowl Investigative Journalism Squadron managed to obtain classified procedures which the CIA plans to implement in this DIY hell. They include such torture as asking prisoners to find various objects like the Norraker, Lisabo, Aglikstid — a task which would be akin to the voyage of Columbus in 1492, if the entire ocean was a cold, unforgiving, concrete box, and the guiding zephyr was an incompetent blue-vested high-schooler, mumbling, “Ya umm, I think I know where the bed stuff is.” On top of that, one of those names is not even real, a cruel twist from the minds of deranged CIA torture experts. Before each meal, prisoners will be asked to put together complicated dining sets, with slats and bolts that “obviously just don’t go there” (page 33 of “How to Fuck UP Terrorists in the Whitest Way Possible: The IKEA-GTMO Move”). The directions will no doubt be in Swedish, further made illegible by the blood stains from daily extremity accidents, such as prisoners getting their fingers caught between pieces “fyra” and “sju”. When they inevitably fail the task, they’ll be asked to “yodel” (scaling the impossibly high warehouse full of infinite boxes of pre-packaged disappointment and screaming “I’M SORRY” follow by the names of their loved ones).
Shortly following, mealtime rolls around and the prisoners are greeted by old, leaky cardboard boxes filled to the brim with cold, sauced horse meatballs. An asterisk next to this in the guide (page 47 “How to Fuck UP Terrorists in the Whitest Way Possible: The IKEA-GTMO Move”) reads, “lol let’s make them look at pictures of Lil’ Sebastian from Parks and Rec while they eat.” Their day ends with sleep, and, of course, they must put together their own beds, which ends up being a Sisyphean task, as their nights are punctuated by crashes and groans of their creations giving way to their lean, horse-filled frames.