Wait a minute - am I reading Mad magazine?

 The Associated Press reveals:

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, detainees in the CIA's secret prison network told interrogators about an important courier with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti who was close to bin Laden.

But:

It took years of work before the CIA identified the courier's real name: Sheikh Abu Ahmed, a Pakistani man born in Kuwait.

There's a shocker for you – "Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti" is Abu Ahmed from Kuwait.  And it only took years of work to sort that out.  I can't decide which is worse – al-Qaida's inability to come up with decent fake names, or the CIA's inability to figure out who someone is when al-Qaida essentially tells them his name and where he's from.

Even the "Spy vs. Spy" cartoon in Mad Magazine isn't this silly.