the padilla story is outrageuosly funny. or just outrageous. or something.

poor mr padilla was arrested in the 911 swarthy-sweep, and then he became 'dirty bomber' and now we see that he was trying to blow up apartments.
heres the transcript of the announcement - it reads luck hanschristianfukking andersen http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/06/01/comey.padilla.transcript/

it seems that padilla had trained with alq explosives experts, learning "about switches and circuits and timers", but then decided to build a nuke with his mate with 'instructions from the internet'. after not much success with that, his second best option was to find apartment buildings with natural gas, rent out and duct tape a room, leave the oven on (presumably) and then blow the thing to smithereens. its a long step down from nukes to duct tape...

"...locate high-rise apartment buildings that had natural gas supplied to all floors, that they rent two apartments in each building, seal those apartments, turn on the gas, and set timers to detonate and destroy the buildings simultaneously.
"Shaikh Mohammed wanted them to blow up 20 apartment buildings simultaneously.
"In response, Padilla pointed out that he could not possibly rent that many apartments without drawing attention to himself, and that he might have to limit this operation to the destruction of two or three entire apartment buildings."
2 things - a) my guess is that renting 2 apartments in a single building is likely to generate more suspicion than renting singles in different buildings - so the logic doesnt make sense. b) why not rent hotel rooms which would be a more effective terror target, and you can rent a few rooms at a time in a few separate hotel rooms without raising suspicion. perhaps he was worried that hotel security would notice all the duct tape...

anyways, given that the whole dirty bomb thing has been called off, and the new gas plan being organised, cnn's choice of title for the article "Suspected 'dirty bomb' plot *included* plan to blow up apartments" ( http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/06/01/padilla.documents/) is at best misleading, but the intent quite transparent, as always.

padilla also "*admitted* that he attend the religious pilgrimage, the hajj" - and he also asked for a new passport: "a classic act of al Qaeda tradecraft"

and the final reassuring word from the dep AG:
"In my experience as a prosecutor, one of the hallmarks of truthfulness tends to be stories don't line up exactly. But the core elements do, and we've tried to include it all."

goodbye sweet idea of america