Jake Brodsky wrote:


What's broken is the assumption that this really DOES stop pink elephants.

The assumption that there in fact ARE Pink Elephants (ie. Suicide
Terrorists flying GA aircraft) is what's wrong here. We've never seen
one. They would seem to be highly improbable creatures.

I just read an article in today's NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/15/politics/15TALK.html

It includes:

Just before Thanksgiving last year, his first
novel, "The Last Jihad," was published. It begins
with a suicide pilot crashing his private plane
into the president's motorcade and ends with the
president saying a silent prayer as the nuclear
bombs he ordered are dropped on Iraq. By December,
it was on The New York Times best-seller list,
where it stayed for 11 weeks.

Apparently, the author is well connected with the "conservative
establishment". He was able to get himself on all sorts of "talk
shows" to promote his book to that audience.

Normally, I'd be all for an author's success. However, it provides
a bit of a view into why the current administration has such fears
of raging pink elephants.

- Andrew