Please.

I went round and round with a couple of people on this one. If you haven't heard, on 6/29/04 (12:28 PM), Northwest Flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles was the proving ground for a terrorist attack... or maybe it wasn't.

According to the original article (which I refuse to link to), a group of 14 Syrian men exhibited suspicious behavior, like: being Middle Eastern, wearing clothes with arabic writing, carrying a McDonalds bag, standing in the aisles talking, and ... (suspense trumpets here) ... going to the bathroom.

Now, the author of the article (who I refuse to identify) arrives at the conclusion that this was a group of terrorists making a dry run for a terrorist attack. She concludes her piece with the following statement: "So the question is... Do I think these men were musicians? I'll let you decide. But I wonder, if 19 terrorists can learn to fly airplanes into buildings, couldn't 14 terrorists learn to play instruments?" Well, I wonder, could a passenger see a group of Middle Eastern men and mistake them for terrorists out of fear and prejudice? I'll let you decide.

Seriously, though, this whole thing is totally ridiculous. I'll let snopes.com sum it up for me: False. Come on, people! When even the federal air marshals are saying there's nothing to worry about, really, there's nothing to worry about! Now go read salon's take on the incident, written by a real pilot.