Good Thing There's No War on Terror

Otherwise, one might suspect that this terrorist dry run suggests that there are jihadists who do, indeed, want to kill us.

In an era when people raising conscientious objections about the immigration bill are being told in effec to "shut up and sit down," it's instructive to note all the bureaucratic fumbling in the terrorist dry run -- as these same agencies would have an enormous part in ensuring that the illegals being offered probationary visas and, ultimately, citizenship don't pose security threats:

According to the Homeland Security report, the "suspicious passengers," 12 Syrians and their Lebanese-born promoter, were traveling on Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles on expired visas. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services extended the visas one week after the June 29, 2004, incident.

The report also says that a background check in the FBI's National Crime Information Center database, which was performed June 18 as part of a visa-extension application, produced "positive hits" for past criminal records or suspicious behavior for eight of the 12 Syrians, who were traveling in the U.S. as a musical group.

In addition, the band's promoter was listed in a separate FBI database on case investigations for acting suspiciously aboard a flight months earlier. (emphasis added)

Even with all this, no one bothered to pick these guys up before June 29 -- and, in fact, their visas were extended after the incident! Yet we're supposed to be confident that the same sort of government bureaucrats can handle an influx of 12 to 20 million new people and check each one.

Homeland Security officials initially denied the complaints [about the behavior of those conducting the "dry run"] and blamed passengers who reported the incident to the press as behaving hysterically. However, the inspector general report shows that air marshals had the group of men under surveillance before they boarded the plane.

So don't worry -- even with the new immigration bill in place, you won't know of the presence of any suspicious foreigners, at least until after an investigation when they try to launch a terrorist attack.