<img attachment="crsbe100506.gif" align="left" class="frame" caption="Howling at the Muslim Moon">Just one day after writing the article, <a href="{app}view_article.php?id=2376">Terror Kabuki</a>, the cartoon to the right show up, almost as if on cue. The question mark is the coward's shield, protecting the cartoonist from actually putting the statement in print that he doesn't think the Times Square bomber was acting alone. That, in fact, he sees it as just another skirmish in the battle against Islam itself---as evidenced by the crescent moon and star. That's quite a stretch, though, isn't it? The guy they arrested is the bomber? He's just a schmuck American whose life got real shitty real fast. And, if he did it and the story checks out---which is highly unlikely, given the track record for these things, but suppose for the nonce that it is---he's just the kind of introverted idiot & asshole to take it out on the big, bad world---and then fail miserably. The unfolding story of the alleged bomber---of the man that has been arrested anyway---sounds much more like that of Joseph Stack than Mohammed Atta. The story is that the alleged bomber was married, had a kid and---up until less than a year ago---owned his own home in New Jersey. Then, everything went South at one, he got moody and distant, went to visit family in Pakistan, acted all weird and left his wife when he returned (or was thrown out, it's not clear).<fn> That really sounds like the story of a guy who just snapped, who went round the bend because his life went down the toilet. Now he's being connected to the Taliban, who supposedly trained him to make bombs.<fn> But he was a financial analyst while living here; he was married to an American. He claimed to love shopping, looked like a typical NJ guido---hair products and all---and wasn't really any sort of Muslim until the end of 2009.<fn> He sounds far more like the poor abducted chemist from the the movie, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804522/" source="" author="">Rendition</a>, actually. We can only hope that Shahzad's story doesn't follow El-Ibrahimi's (or the real-life Arar's) too closely.<fn> If Shahzad is guilty, then let him cool his heels; recent history shows, however, that an arrest means very little. Though the media touts each arrest as a victory over the terrorists, they are just playing their role in the theater. The government always wants to make an arrest within a few days---so the American people don't have to live with the fear of a killer on the loose. But that's part of the story as well: the American people would likely forget about the whole thing if no arrest was made, forgetting to be afraid like they're suppose to be. And that's what the government is afraid of. <hr> <ft>You can find a treasure-trove of links in the article, <a href="http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/05/04/faisal-shahzad-an-ordinary-man" source="Antiwar.com" author="Justin Raimondo">Faisal Shahzad: An Ordinary Man</a></ft> <ft>It's hard to tell whether the U.S. is making him out to be a major baddie---or if they're poking fun at how horrible the Taliban are at making bombs. Because the bomb he put together was, apparently, a joke. A ninth-grader could have done better.</ft> <ft>As if being Muslim has anything to do with being evil or crazy enough to try to set off a bomb in a public place. All it takes is desperation, instability or a heaping helping of both. Joseph Stack---the guy who flew his plane into the IRS building a little while ago---wasn't a Muslim. And the media have forgotten all about him already. How quickly will they forget about this Pakistani?</ft> <ft>For those who haven't seen the movie---and if you have, you'd remember it, because it's quite disturbing---Jeremy El-Ibrahimi is a chemist with a wife and child traveling back to the States after a conference in South Africa. He is apprehended by the U.S. government on entry and <i>rendered</i> to Tunisia for interrogation. After weeks of torture, a local CIA man helps him escape and return to his family. The story roughly follows the real-life experiences of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar" source="Wikipedia">Maher Arar</a>, a Canadian citizen, who was also innocent of all wrongdoing.</ft>