US "Intelligence" that halted flights 'mistaken'

"The French government cancelled six flights between Paris and Los Angeles by the national flag-carrier Air France last month after US investigators wrongly identified six passengers as potential terrorists, the French interior ministry said today.

A ministry spokesman said the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had based its information on passenger lists containing names similar to the names of suspected members of the international terrorist network al-Qaeda."

Remember the Spruce Goose, famous military-industrial disaster? Well, it's presented in Long Beach California as a shining achievement of the wonderful Howard Hughes.

That's a real Bubba-ism: take a disaster and make it a triumph. And that's what we're seeing in the Air France flight cancellations. What is really an intelligence failure is being portrayed in the US as an "act of terrorism averted" and that we can all be glad that Las Vegas didn't suffer from it.

What a stupid idea it is to screen passengers by name alone.