Maybe you’ve seen this Urban Legend in your email box, carrot-packed and with a cc list heavy on right wing list serves.  Or maybe you saw it on a message board.  Oliver North lays out a scary super villian he encountered in his extra-constitutional globe trotting adventures.  An Incredulous Democratic Senator guffows.  And then North gives the name.  “Osamba Bin Laden”.

The first time I saw this was 2004, or maybe 2003.  John Kerry’s name was inserted into the narrative, as per the Presidential contest.  Last week I encountered it again, this time with the name “Al Gore”.  Arguably Kerry at least was on the right Investigative Committee, and for the life of me I can’t countenance why we settled back to Gore  (I suppose it might’ve been a reversion to 2002, Gore still probing a presidential run, and a means to suggest “We got the Right President in!”).  The thing is a dud, comforting the biases of a slice of the electorate who man the keyboards against incoming Democratic Administrations.

The propagators of that urban legend probably are hanging onto the “We did it” proclamation of “al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” — not to be confused with the other al Qaeda franchises such as al Qaeda in Iraq, and the famous al Qaeda in Walla Walla.  The keyboard warriors have rededicated their mission in the wake of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed airplane attack.  I don’t quite know what to make of them — are we supposed to find out what country he comes from, and then bomb Yemen back to the Stone Age?  At any rate, the attack was foiled by the second to last line of defense.  The final line of defense would be the possibility that the chemical reactions concocted would have been a dud — a pointer that everything in the plans has to work to get this to succeed.  But we don’t really want to get that far in the problem.  This next last line of defense is somewhat better, and while still we don’t want to get this far in the screening process — it is here that Janet Napolitano horribly tripped up, there is something there to point to the folly the Islamic Terrorists face.  The success of 9/11 is no longer operable — the plane is not going to be hi-jacked ever again, that tactical plan has been spent away.  So a terrorist receds to the next line of attack — which has for them the unfortunate side effect of being likely snuffed out by half-way observant by standers due to the conspicuous nature of how the plan is implemented.  Understand, the mode of operation for the terrorist right now has them pulling stuff out of their anus and out of their shoes — this cannot help but lead to suspicious behavior, and in this case the by-stander quickly assimilated the oddity of aguy behind a blanket with smoke starting to roil out.

The Richard Jewell or Whatshisname Beemer in us has less personal danger and a larger vantage point to save the day.  I suppose we could name the new guy — but it seems he wants a pay in advance for his story, so he’ll just have to go unmentioned as I have no interest in paying him.

Meanwhile, 25 people were killed by a suicide bomber in Pakistan.  Obama made sure to mention throw in a rhetorical supprot for the Iranian protesters in his big speech (and I think he made sure to sidle past the Bush golfing gaffe).  All showing that, you know, the physical geographic spot of America remains on the periphery of the Islamists’ War.

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