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A terrorist under every bed?

2002-05-26

'The FBI issued a fresh warning Saturday that terrorists may be interested in using small planes to carry out suicide attacks.

FBI supervisory special agent Steven Berry said the agency had issued an "intelligence update" to law enforcement regarding small planes but he declined to be more specific.

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association said on its Web site the alert was issued because the FBI "has received information indicating that terrorists may still be interested in using small general aviation aircraft for suicide attacks in the United States."'

I'd like to issue my own warning. The events of terrorism and, much more important, the mechanics of it and the workings of the structure behind it, are of utmost importance to us all today. They are much more important than Anna Kournikova's breasts or other appurtenances, who killed Chandra, or Winona LaDuke's opinion on most anything.

But there's another extreme to which we can go, and that's to panic over non-existent, hypothetical threats, or unlikely threats, or to take the legitimate wariness the threat of terrorism induces, turn it into outright fear and then wear it like a bucket over the national head. Take an entire evening and a 12-pack, and anyone with a three-digit IQ can come up with probably a hundred ways terrorists might kill or maim large numbers of us. Of that hundred ways, the Bad Guys have probably throught of somewhere between three and ten in their own bull sessions, and of another 90 or 97 that we didn't.

Guarding against the likely makes good sense. Guarding against the unlikely is a waste of resources that could be spent on better things, like beer. Making political points by hollering "what-did-he-know-and-when-did-he-know-it" is cheap and tawdry and should be punished with the National Finger. And issuing a warning a day about everything from Cessnas full of dynamite to frogmen to exploding apartment complexes dulls the nation's willingness to listen when there really is a wolf.

Posted by:Fred Pruitt

#1 I fully intend to panic when I see a small plane dropping scuba divers into the ocean with nuclear suitcase bombs attached. These people will then enter the US, drop their bombs in apartments that they have rented -- and blow them all up.
Assuming, of course, that they don't get the Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, or Statue of Liberty -- or whatever -- first.
Ahem.
Pardon me, I'm putting some earplugs in until the howling stops. Wake me if anyone gets nuked, ok?

Posted by: Kathy 2002-05-26 18:17:38

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