November 2, 2005

Terrorist "Dry Runs?"

Since 9/11, several terrorist "dry runs" have been carried out by Islamists in the U.S. and Europe. Perhaps the most famous of these occurred last year aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Detroit to Los Angeles, when the threatening behavior of 14 Syrian men created a panic among fellow passengers. This disturbing incident and its aftermath (including the maddening bureaucratic brain freeze of the government officials who investigated the Syrians) is recounted in author Annie Jacobsen's new book, Terror in the Skies: Why 9/11 Could Happen Again. Jacobsen was actually on the aforementioned Northwest Airlines flight, and her story is a truly chilling reminder of how vulnerable we still are to the scourge of Islamic terrorism, thanks partly to our own government's politically correct ineptness.

With that in mind, it's interesting to note an incident which took place yesterday in Europe aboard a train bound for Amsterdam. Here's a brief summary, from AP:

Two men wearing traditional Islamic clothes were arrested on a train bound from Frankfurt to Amsterdam Tuesday after a scare over a suspicious package, police said.

The men were arrested after the train came to an emergency stop near Amsterdam's central station in the late afternoon, but the package was harmless, Amsterdam police spokesman Gerard Vrooland said.

Passengers had alerted police after seeing the two-Dutch speaking men pacing the car and visiting the bathroom together.

"They were acting strangely, and they made people nervous by the way they behaved, coming and going to the bathroom together and carrying a large backpack," Vrooland said.

Could this have been a terrorist dry run? The two men's decidedly Islamic dress and suspicious behavior--not to mention their repeated trips to the bathroom and their handling of a large backpack--were cause for grave concern, and Dutch authorities were right to detain them. The two men were released after interrogation, but it's almost certain they'll be monitored by Dutch intelligence. Sadly, this is the new reality in the Islamicized West.

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