Two Men on Flight from Chicago Arrested on 'Preparation of a Terrorist Attack'

Lets hope not.

 

Pretty sure they do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings

 

Whew. Good thing we've split.

 

Maybe the Freep is still unsure of al Murisi's status, but it sounds an awful lot like he overstayed his visa. He's certainly not eligible to work while on a tourist visa.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/08/31/netherlands.airport.arrests/index.html?hpt=T2

"This looks like nothing," said one official, saying both men missed flights in Chicago due to a gate change and their airline rebooked them onto the same plane.

"We see no evidence of a dry run or a connection to terrorism," said the source, who is not authorized to discuss the case with the media and asked not to be named.

 

Great. What was the reason the one guy had a watch taped to a pepto-bismol bottle?

 

So the watch doesn't get diarrhea. Duh.

 

1. If the last report is right, well, false alarms are a major part of doing a good job in security management.
2. Bubbler, it seems to me we're lucky terrorists prefer bombs to guns (they always have, back to the anarchists in Europe in the late 19th century). Guns are ever so much easier to acquire in the U.S. than bombs are, and more important, guns are a pressure point in our society. Coordinated murder-suicide shooting sprees at a dozen shopping malls would wreak way more havoc in this country than a bombing, because it would be beyond traumatic for our society to consider guns as a risk to public safety. Some folks just wouldn't accept it.

 

So what's the deal here?

Is TSA planting Pepto-Bismol bombs in the bags of Muslim-looking folks to gin up their terror termination numbers?

 

This just gets weirder and weirder. Forget that they have Middle Eastern names. They have all this suspicious stuff on them and in their luggage, but that's not enough to keep them from flying? I suppose the Dutch have no issues with making those arrests, but was it worth risking a couple hundred lives?

I don't believe CNN's "not a dry run" quote for a minute. What, they're selling quirky Pepto timepieces and needed to carry samples to the Netherlands to make their pitch? Give me a break.

 

Let's see. Would you pack Pepto-Bismol, cell phones, and watches like this?

. Tape the Pepto-Bismol to a cell-phone
. Tape the other cell phones and the watches together

Even if I was crazy enough to consider doing this, I would think of TSA in a heart-beat. Something is up here.

 

Maybe the original story was wrong about all that detail.