French Find No Terror Tie to Six Flights

"French security officials said Thursday that they had found no terrorist links among the people booked for the six Air France flights between Paris and Los Angeles that were canceled on Wednesday as a result of warnings from American officials."

Some interesting twists to this story.

First off, the US newspapers, outside of the NY Times, have largely been presented the "terrorist threat" as real. The WashPost implies that the French authorities had agreed that the threat was positively identified. The chronicly Bubba Houston Chronicle headlines "U.S. claims attack on Las Vegas foiled". So any casual reader, listener or spectator is left with the impression that the attempt was real and somehow France was behind it.

Over in Europe, on the other hand, the general impression is quite different. In France, the information about the decision to cancel the flights is that the US would have, in any event, forced the planes to turn around so why even bother to fly them. Nobody in France buys the threat argument but, seeing it at best as a another US intelligence failure and at worst as another politically motivated ploy against France. These conclusions are, in fact, the only credible conclusions at which one can arrive under the circumstances.

But going further, the real question is "what to do with war-oppressed US"? The US is now in a perpetual state of war, the orangish-red alert being only the latest manifestation. What to do with these frightened, paranoid Americans?