Ramp Up Your Vigilance

I like to stay current on what the enemies of freedom are up to, so the other day I was reading an article in Time about terrorist attacks involving liquid explosives and how helpless we are to prevent them, when I came across this sentence:

Terrorists, like movie studios and toddlers, don't like to try new things.

Excellent! Like I always say, no subject is too serious to interrupt with a swipe at Hollywood (and toddlers).

From then on, I read with a heightened sense of awareness that Time was capable of anything. And sure enough, toward the end the article, things took an unanticipated turn.

After four pages of scaring the crap out of its readers to help ramp up their vigilance -- did you know that the Homeland Security Advisory Council has a director for nuclear threats and one for biochemical threats but not one for explosives?!! -- Time let this cat out of its sack:

It's worth considering the probability of an attack, not just the possibility. Once terrorists decide to bomb an airline with liquid explosives, how likely is it that they will succeed?

Yes, according to Time, just because terrorists might want to do something, that doesn't mean they'll be able to. So much for the article's carefully-constructed fearporium!

In closing, apparently concerned that one or two readers might still be feeling a trifle concerned, Time went with the following statement:

Last year car crashes claimed the lives of an estimated 40,000 people in America. Terrorists? Zero.

I have no idea what car crashes have to do with enemies of freedom, but clearly Time is an enemy of vigilance. How they think such tempered reporting will be helpful, I have no idea. Maybe they've got the bird flu.