A trial  is underway in Britain of seven men charged with planning various acts of terrorist mayhem. One of them was to hijack a British Airways plane and crash it. The idea was to recruit 30 men to overwhelm with raw power whatever resistance may have occurred on board. Fortunately, the plot was stopped by the British security service MI5 who eavesdropped on the suspects' telephone conversations. Yesterday they played a tape in the courtroom on which one of the defendants was heard saying:

Thirty brothers on a British Airways flight... as soon as an air marshal gets up and shoots one the others just jump him.

One can only thank the security services for closely monitoring these jihad—minded Islamist. Listening in on phone conversations is one of our most effective weapons in the fight against terror and can prevent — as in this case — terrible tragedies from taking place.

This, however, is not something appreciated by American liberals who not only outed the NSA program whose purpose was to pick up precisely this kind of intelligence, but they also plan to impeach the president for it they should win back the House in the fall. The very fact that they can still show their faces in front of the American people and ask for their votes is indicative of a worrisome weakness in our culture. These people should be tarred for the dangerous nitwits they are and ran out of town in disgrace.

Vasko Kohlmayer  6 17 06