This is so funny I forgot to laugh:

When the stress of the war in Iraq becomes too severe, the Pentagon has a suggestion for military families: Learn how to laugh.

With help from the Pentagon’s chief laughter instructor, families of National Guard members are learning to walk like a penguin, laugh like a lion and blurt “ha, ha, hee, hee and ho, ho.”

No joke.

Actually, this makes me want to literally tear my hair out. What a psychotic fucking picture this paints: “Don’t worry about your family member who is risking their life to fight an unjust illegal war! Just walk like a penguin! Ha ha hee hoo ho ho!” And just think of how great this training could be for soldiers too. While they’re busy rousting civilians from their homes, they can giggle maniacally and just watch their frustrations melt away! Why don’t we all laugh right now over how ridiculous this whole war thing is anyway! HA HA HEE HEE HOO HOO! Ah, don’t we all feel a lot better now? Now, let’s get back to fighting those godless terrorists! Look at those towel headed idiots! Don’t they look funny there bleeding to death in their homes! Ha ha! Now let’s torture them! Ho ho! What a grand time we’re having! I love laughing!

“I laugh every chance I get,” says the instructor, retired Army colonel James “Scotty” Scott. “That’s why I’m blessed to be at the Pentagon, where we definitely need a lot of laughter in our lives.”

Scott, 57, is certified as a laughter training specialist by the Ohio-based World Laughter Tour, a group that promotes mirth as medicine. […] The laughter program was Scott’s idea. It costs the military virtually nothing, because Scott already travels to states as a director of military family support policy.

Oh, what a surprise - they are officially using this program because it’s a free band-aid for a festering fatal wound.

“We believe our program prevents hardening of the attitudes,” says Scott, in one of his wordplay aphorisms that beg for a rimshot. The founder and chief executive of the World Laughter Tour is psychologist Steve Wilson, who calls himself “Cheerman of the Bored.”

“The guiding principle is to laugh for no reason. And that’s one of the reasons it works so well for military families,” Scott says. “There’s a lot they have to be stressed over, a lot of worries, a lot of concerns.”

“Hardening of the attitudes?” Well, shit, we wouldn’t want people’s attitudes to get hard while they’re out there fighting and dying for our oil! I mean, heck, they might not want to do it if we didn’t give them a cute way to blow off steam! Ha ha! Hee hee! Hoo hoo!

Reading this, I think, is the the closest I’ve ever come to actually going insane. I mean, I can’t even fathom the kind of twisted fucked-up evil logic that goes into pushing something like this on people who have an absolute 100% right to be upset.

But hey! What a silly world we live in! Thank you CIA for turning our frowns upside down!