I Will Kill Your Spirit With My Bic Of Doom

OK, here's a conundrum for you. Are we catching only the terrorists who are idiots because that's the only ones we can find, or are we catching only the terrorists who are idiots because that's the best they got?

We draw your attention to this week's episode of Larry, Moe, Curly and Shemp go jihad:

Four men were charged yesterday with plotting to blow up fuel tanks, terminal buildings and the web of fuel lines running beneath Kennedy International Airport. "We had these guys under surveillance for quite a period of time," said Mark J. Mershon, the assistant director in charge of the FBI office in New York. "Well, since right after we saw a posting on Missed Connections that said 'You were the tall swarthy gentleman with a deep hatred of America. I was wearing the Moqtada Rules T shirt. Did we have a moment?'"

Oil industry experts said safety shut-off valves would almost assuredly have prevented an exploding airport fuel tank from igniting all or even part of the network. "See the thing is, we don't want them to explode," said a spokesperson for the company that manages the pipeline and storage facility. "That's why we design them to do things like take lightening strikes, earth quakes, hurricanes, stuff like that."

But officials said the four men determined to carry out their attack, having conducted “precise and extensive” surveillance of the airport using photographs, video, the recollections of Russell Defreitas, who had worked as a cargo handler at JFK, and satellite images downloaded from Google Earth. "They planned to actually go out to the airport and look around as soon as they saved up enough for cab fare," said Mershon.

“The enforcement action we are announcing today was taken to prevent a terrorist plot from maturing into a terrorist act,” Mr. Mershon said. "We figure they were only days away from realizing they could ride the bus to JFK."

Mershon said the men had also traveled repeatedly to Guyana and Trinidad in recent months, seeking the blessing and financial backing of an extremist Muslim group based in Trinidad and Tobago called Jamaat al-Muslimeen. "They were given coupons good for free drinks with the purchase of a Wendy's Spicy Chicken Sandwich, and an undisclosed number of disposable Bic lighters."

One law enforcement official played down Mr. Defreitas’s ability to carry out an attack, calling him “a sad sack” and “not a Grade A terrorist.” Comparing the case with the plot in which a group of men were arrested last month on charges of planning to attack soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey. "These guys need to quit watching A Team reruns and get out more," the official said.

“They didn’t have the money and they didn’t have the bombs,” the official said of the suspects, “but if we let it go it could have gotten there; they could have won the Lotto; they could have gotten a scholarship to Terrorist University; maybe even an athletic scholarship which would have made them eligible for special tutorial assistance. I don't even want to think about what might have happened if they ever got out of explosive training with all their fingers."