Thursday, August 24, 2006

We Can All Relax Now

The incident aboard the Northwest Airliners plane was "not terror-related."


AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The interrogation of 12 men who were removed from a Northwest Airlines flight after they aroused the suspicions of air marshals and crew produced no evidence of terrorism, the Justice Ministry said Thursday.

Flight NW0042 to Bombay, India, returned to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on Wednesday escorted by Dutch fighter jets, and the 12 were questioned and arrested.

"So far there are no signs that this was a terrorist threat," said ministry spokeswoman Judith Sluiter.

She declined to say why the men remained under arrest, and the investigation was continuing.


Yeah, I'd love to know the answer to that question, especially since all they were, apparently, doing was playing with cell phones:


A U.S. government official said crew members and air marshals aboard the Northwest DC-10 bound for Bombay saw the passengers trying to use cell phones and passing them among themselves while the jet was taking off. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject.

"It was behavior that average passengers wouldn't do," the official said.


Indian authorities don't seem so sure a terror plot was not involved:


India's junior foreign minister, Anand Sharma, confirmed that Dutch authorities have provided a list of names to Indian officials, but gave no other details.

"I don't know how close we were, but my gut tells me these people wanted to hijack the airplane," passenger Nitin Patel of Boston told the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper. Patel sat behind the men in business class.

The mass-circulation De Telegraaf quoted passenger Sarat Menon as saying several of the men spoke Urdu, the language commonly spoken by Indian Muslims and in Pakistan.


The thing is, in my opinion, when our government officials put an umbrella of silence over an investigation in its early stages by telling us "the incident was determined to be not terror-related," they are simply giving us the message they are not willing to deal with reality.

Now, the next thing I am going to say is important, so anyone reading this who may work in Law Enforcement, Homeland Security, or any Intelligence Dept. had better listen up:

When you tell us you are not willing to deal with the reality of terrorism, you insure that we, the common citizens will move one step closer to taking the law into our own hands.

Stop the lying.

1 comment:

Kleinverzet said...

Man, you should see how the MSM in the Netherlands is treating this:

Oh, hahah. Those silly, jittery Americans with their silly air marshalls. Making all that fuss over nothing.

In the mean time I am not so sure it's all fuss over nothing. If it were 1) the pilot wouldn't have called a return, 2) would not have requested escorts and 3) the ministry would have been a lot more forthcoming with information and 4) the suspects would NOT have been transported out in vans with blinds while wearing cuffs.

There was something going on on that flight people aren't telling us.

Very poignant conclusion, Pastorius. And very, very correct.