This harrowing account by an airline passenger is getting lots of attention. If you haven't read it, you need to:
After seeing 14 Middle Eastern men board separately (six together, eight individually) and then act as a group, watching their unusual glances, observing their bizarre bathroom activities, watching them congregate in small groups, knowing that the flight attendants and the pilots were seriously concerned, and now knowing that federal air marshals were on board, I was officially terrified.. Before I'm labeled a racial profiler or -- worse yet -- a racist, let me add this. A month ago I traveled to India to research a magazine article I was writing. My husband and I flew on a jumbo jet carrying more than 300 Hindu and Muslim men and women on board. We traveled throughout the country and stayed in a Muslim village 10 miles outside Pakistan. I never once felt fearful. I never once felt unsafe. I never once had the feeling that anyone wanted to hurt me. This time was different.
There are already questions being raised as to whether this account of an apparent terrorist dry run is a hoax. Maybe. But the threat scenario it describes - a team of people assembling a bomb in mid-flight from innocuous components - has been warned about since the beginning of the year.
Meanwhile, there's more unsettling news (via Power Line): "Man arrested with suicide note on flight to Minneapolis-St. Paul International."
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has more on this here and here, including a confirmation of Annie Jacobsen's story from the Federal Air Marshals Service.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Donald Sensing says "Color me skeptical".
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Mark Steyn does a "topical take" on Jaccobsen's account, with a flashback to "Flying While Arab" from his 2002 book The Face of the Tiger.
FINAL UPDATE (?): Confirmation that the 14 Syrians in question were in fact a band known as Nour Mehana. Michelle Malkin weighs in with a series of updates.
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