If you scan the headlines today, you might notice that a Lebanese man confessed to plotting to bomb a New York transit tunnel. The plan was in its early stages, but it has been foiled. Delays on the PATH train will therefore continue to be New Jersey Transit’s fault. The plot was discovered by monitoring internet chat rooms, and apparently it wasn’t a plan that had a chance of doing what the plotter wanted (to flood Wall Street). But a dumb, careless, and misguided potential terrorist is still a potential terrorist, so this one definitely goes in the “W” column. [For “win,” mind you. Not that other thing…]
What really struck me, though, was this egregious typo:
“After questioning he confessed … that he was planning to travel to Pakistan for four months training and that the date for the attack was decided to be late in 2006,” the ministry said in a statement.
See that? It says he was planning to get his terror training in “Pakistan?” That’s a huge mistake. Clearly, the Lebanese minister was mistranslated, even if he said it in English. He meant “Iran,” right? Or “North Korea,” perhaps. Or “Iraq.” When you’re training to do something evil, why would you go anywhere but Evil’s own Axis? You wouldn’t! And even if you did, you wouldn’t head to one of the US’s staunchest, most reliable allies in the fight to spread democracy and defeat terrorism, would you? Please! That would be nuts!
So listen up, world press corps - make that correction before it gives people the wrong impression. To leave that statement as is would be irresponsible.





36 comments
hedera
July 7, 2006 at 10:43 am
1OK, they caught one. However, I’m not sure how much credit the authorities should get for catching someone so dumb that he thinks bombing a tunnel (almost by definition, below ground level, since it goes under a river) would flood Wall Street (above sea level the last time I looked, and certainly above the Holland Tunnel). A bomb in the Holland Tunnel would be a Bad Thing, no question; but this guy’s disconnect from reality seems to be even bigger than usual in the Stupid Crook category.
Not to mention, they seem to have caught him by monitoring Internet chat rooms?? OK, I work in the Internet world, so maybe I know more than your average joe, but did he really think there was no record of his chats anywhere, and that only his friends could see his posts?
YLlama
July 7, 2006 at 10:50 am
2By the by, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey actually runs the PATH trains. New Jersey Transit runs a different set of trains. Although you may nevertheless be correct about PATH delays being its fault.
Maximum Bob
July 7, 2006 at 11:10 am
3This is just a misunderstanding. The perpetrators aren’t in league with Pakistan; they just wanted to pick up a few odds and ends at A.Q. Khan’s Nuclear Sam’s Club.
Mieke
July 7, 2006 at 11:25 am
4I know. They are just getting lazy at the big papers. No fact checking due to budget cuts. It’s kind of like when they wrote that most of the 9-11 terrorists were from Egypt. How they didn’t catch that typo is beyond me. “Egypt” isn’t spelled anything like “Iraq”.
John Murphy
July 7, 2006 at 11:44 am
5Its no different then when they regularly spell Osama Bin laden as Saddam Hussein
tim
July 7, 2006 at 11:57 am
6It sure is nice of these guys to plot terrorist attacks in open chat rooms during election years. The next step is a terrorist plot reality show. Different groups of terrorists hatch nefarious schemes on FOX every Tuesday night, and the American people get to vote on which one scares the hell out of them the most. Then the FBI swoops down and arrests the top vote-getter and ships them to Guantanamo. The losers get rendered to Uzbekistan. Sounds like a ratings and polling winner! Get me Karl Rove and Simon Cowell on the phone.
Kip W
July 7, 2006 at 12:13 pm
7They have a long way to go before they top the Supreme Court’s embarassing typo in the 2000 presidential election. So egregious, they had to pull an “I meant to do that” just to save face.
SeattleDan
July 7, 2006 at 2:36 pm
8It has been clear to me for a long time (and this is ‘confirmed’ by my reading of Ron Suskind’s “One Percent Doctrine”) that Pakistan is a peace-loving nation and no one who lives there (especially those in the mountain border region of Afghanistan) would wish us harm. Clearly, your are right in your assessment, Adam. Another sloppy job by the Press.
Mojo
July 7, 2006 at 3:00 pm
9At least they fixed the typo found in most foreign press that the ring leader was actually caught by Lebanon rather than the US.
cooper
July 7, 2006 at 3:47 pm
10Obviously, for him to be laying the dime on Pakistan, they haven’t tortured the terrorist long enough. Come on, boys, tape him back into the chair pull out more fingernails until he confesses that he was really going to one of the Axes of Evil to get the training. Really shoddy work there.
Did anyone listen to the President’s news conference today? My brain froze after W said “It’s hard work” twice in the first 3 minutes. Rovian claptrap, not doubt, since W’s concept of hard work is to have to shake the Martini instead of stir, and he hasn’t done that, if we can believe the press, in 20 years.
David
July 7, 2006 at 3:56 pm
11I understand W is going on a nationwide tour to find out what the people are thinking. I think he should get his head out of his ass.
cooper
July 7, 2006 at 4:42 pm
12Sorry about the fingernails. I saw “Syriana” last night and I should have averted my eyes during the torture scene. Brrr!!!
Dale
July 7, 2006 at 5:05 pm
13The Holland tunnel thing was obviously just a cover for the real terrorist plan to bring New Jersey to its knees–didn’t anybody see the suspicious-looking turbaned man run in to the assembly and insist on a sales tax hike?
cooper
July 7, 2006 at 6:07 pm
14So, David, dee, & waterfowler - Hot enough for you? Actually, today was quite pleasant. A cold front came through and the temps dropped from upper 90’s to lower 80’s with zero hudimity. Oh, but that’s right - you’re not in Piedmont NC. Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have brought up our balmy, autumn like weather report for today. That’s okay, you all have your funeral home fans with you, right? So go ahead and make your own breeze and I’ll just hush.
tess
July 7, 2006 at 8:12 pm
15Frankly, I’m just glad they didn’t mention a coutry like Zimbabwe or else we’d have to give a damn about any nation in Africa other than Niger.
SeattleDan
July 7, 2006 at 9:18 pm
16coop, sounds as if you are having Seattle-type weather. Nice,huh? Much better than Pakist..I mean, Iran type weather.
Dale
July 7, 2006 at 9:58 pm
17“When you’re training to do something evil, why would you go anywhere but Evil’s own Axis?”
Looks like they’re turning on their own axis…
Steven Chappel
July 8, 2006 at 4:04 am
18I can just only say that if you do any wrong deed and you think that you will live happily that’s wrong. God is watching you and you need to have those guts to any kind of work that your concious won’t allow.
Rev. Jimmy Swaggart
July 8, 2006 at 7:48 am
19Hark! Steven speaks in tongues!
Pete IVDL
July 8, 2006 at 8:28 am
20Did I actually hear an FBI representative say that the terrorists (and I think I quote) “intended to surveill the site and…” oh darn, I’ve forgottified the other made-up Bushism he used… anyone else hear the report on ATC?
ice weasel
July 8, 2006 at 9:07 am
21So this genius was busted “plotting” in an open chat room.
Yeah…ok.
At least we’re catching the really stupid ones.
That’s good, right?
Ann
July 8, 2006 at 9:53 am
22“Surveil” is now in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. Sorry, Pete! This is what happens when we use those fancy foreign words.
historyenne
July 8, 2006 at 10:21 am
23I always thought the verb for “surveillance” was “survey.” So much for etymology, I guess.
Liz
July 8, 2006 at 6:39 pm
24It WAS, historyenne. Ah, the good old days.
David
July 8, 2006 at 6:50 pm
25Cooper,
It’s just so fucking balmy down here on the edge of the Green Swamp that I can hardly contain myself. Hoping for at least 5 more degrees, which wish will, I am sure, be granted in due time. Besides it ain’t the heat, it’s the fucking heat.
dee
July 9, 2006 at 5:15 am
26We’ve had one day of too rainy and cloudy to hit the beach. Otherwise, it’s been lovely. Today is dawning sunny and quite pleasant — highs in the mid 80’s are forecast. I’m getting my usual light tan with pink undertones AND WE’RE HERE FOR ANOTHER WEEK!!
Oh, and the Tigers are still in first place with a 3 game lead over the White Sox. Life is just so good - a victory by Les Bleus would make it complete.
(Can you tell I haven’t been checking the news lately?)
C. Howard
July 9, 2006 at 6:13 am
27Wait a minute. The trains are bringing in tens of thousands of workers from New Jersey, right. A real terrorist would just let the trains go through, so these “Garden Staters” could do their ususal damage. Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk! (Let’s see if Mr. Sagal, or Susie, will rise for the bait…)
Murray
July 9, 2006 at 1:21 pm
28SeattleDan,
Seattle type weather? I thought that was 4 months of rain, a cloudy day and 4 more months of rain, a cloudy day, etc.
Steven Chappel,
What a coincidence, my regular bike loop goes by a picturesque church and cemetery called Steven’s Chapel. You’re not painted white are you?
Hot Tub Tommy
July 9, 2006 at 3:58 pm
29Jack and I have been admiring what a truly slick manuever Kenny-Boy pulled off faking his death. I must say he knows people in the right places and knows how to use them! He had the Russian Mafia find an absolute perfect body double in Pripyot, Ukraine, who suffered from congestive heart failure, and they paid his family $25,000 for his “services”. They brought him into the US at night, across the Mexican Border, inside a refrigerated meat truck (thanks for that great idea, Lemuel, you sorry sack of shit! I want my money back, now, you asshole!) and up to Aspen in a Lear Jet. Kenny had a few heart anomalies himself and had been a might psycotic and depressed since the trial. He “bought” a prescription for Haldol from one of the doctors of the rich and famous in Aspen and when Feodor, or Dimitre or whatever the fuck his name was, walked in the door, the “stunt double” took the drugs just like a good boy and was cold as Jimmy Hoffa within the hour. A few fingernail clippings from Kenny and several inches of $100 bills to the Medical Examiner and they got a DNA match and a bona fide Death Certificate for the Butcher of Enron.
Kenny left Aspen on a FedEx jet bound for Thailand, having been packed inside a wooden crate with enough oxygen, Paxil and Depends to get him to Phufet Beach, where he’s admiring all of the topless sunbathers from Stockholm, as I write this.
Jack and I know a good plan when we see one, though we’re thinking of getting lost in the Andes, spending the days chewing coca leaves and the nights doing consultant work for the Shining Path.
If Lemuel drops by again, just give him this syringe full of Batrachotoxins into the neck, the carotid artery being the best place. Oh, and when he hits the floor, check his pockets, shoes and that cheesy lanyard he wears around his neck for a safety deposit key. There’s fifty thousand dollars in it for you.
Over and out, Tom DeLay, adventurist, “man for hire”
SeattleDan
July 9, 2006 at 6:12 pm
30You’re right, Murray. That’s pretty much what Seattle weather is like.Or so we tell people. Otherwise folk would come here and find that we live in tropical paradise. Then they’d want to move here and we cant have that happen.
Dave D
July 10, 2006 at 5:00 am
31I understand W is going on a nationwide tour to find out what the people are thinking. - David
That’s funny. Only people who agree with him are ever allowed into any of his ‘events’. So he ‘finds out’ that those people think like him, and believes that he is ‘mainstream’. What a hoot! He’ll never get to hear what you or I think; I think he should get his head out of his ass
Ann
July 10, 2006 at 10:35 am
32My dictionary says that “survey” comes from the Latin “videre.” “Surveillance” comes from the Latin “vigilare” (through French, of course). So they aren’t the same word.
Jim (Original Jim, not the Other Jim or the New Jim)
July 10, 2006 at 1:05 pm
33Ann,
Is this the same subversive dictionary that now lists surveil as the root verb for surveillance?
Ann
July 10, 2006 at 4:56 pm
34Of course it IS a verb in French—”surveiller.” But you knew that. MW admits that “surveil” is a back-formation. But if we borrow the noun, why can’t we borrow the verb?
Dale
July 10, 2006 at 5:28 pm
35Not to be confused with “sirvale” which is what the bartender in your local pub does.
hedera
July 10, 2006 at 9:21 pm
36I wish I could convince myself that Hot Tub Tommy made all that up. To quote the site somebody here linked, long long ago, what I hate about these people is they way they make me sound like a nutcase conspiracy theorist…
And that’s PhuKet beach. Can’t even spell.