Al Qaeda to Unleash Giant Marine Iguana on NYC

Just when things start calming down, you run into a news item like this from the Washington Post. (It's credited to the New York Daily News, which may explain something).

Basically, it turns out that the FBI is spending a lot of time interviewing Abu Zubaida, the operations chief for Osama bin Laden (duh!). He is talking a lot, but seems to be actually saying very little (again, duh!). In talking about planned al Qaeda attacks, he seems to have been thinking about that famous al Qaeda operative, Godzilla. If you remember the movie, (American ripoff, not the Japanese series), they finally nail the big G on the Brooklyn Bridge, which comes out much the worse for wear. Seems like this was what Zubaida had in mind.

Now, of course, the FBI is going to continue interrogating him. Of course, he's going to try to avoid giving out any real information. From what little I know of police procedures, I suspect that they will eventually get some real information out of him, but not for a while. The question is why this extremely vague threat was turned onto a warning of "terrorist activity against New York City landmarks".

Couldn't have anything to do with the FBI revelations that some of their agents had dark suspicions about some of the hijackers, but they got sandbagged by their superiors. Couldn't have anything to do with the press starting to play the "who knew what and when" game about terrorist threats last August. Couldn't have anything to do with folks getting antsy waiting for the FBI to find more al Qaeda operatives (all of them got blown up except one? Gimme a break!)

Remember, children, according to our Attorney General, who is responsible for enforcing such things, criticizing the President is treason. Treason carries the death penalty, and we all know about Georgie Bush and the death penalty.

Later:

Sheesh! No matter how cynical I try to be, I can't keep up. The fact that the White House was using the vague terror threats to kick dirt over criticism comes from no less than Ari Fleischer, official flak for the Administration, as reported in the Washington Times. Note that the Times is about as politically-correct right wing Republican as you can get.