Roger Cohen's "The Real Threat to America": Thanks, Roger, for Letting Us Know

In an online op-ed in today's New York Times entitled "The Real Threat to America" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/opinion/26iht-edcohen.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss), Roger Cohen would have us know, "it remains a mystery that the enemy — if as powerful as portrayed — has not contrived a single terrorist act on U.S. soil since 9/11."

Roger seems to have a very short memory. Months after becoming a U.S. citizen, Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber, was given $15,000 and five days of explosives training by the Taliban earlier this year in order to plant a car bomb not far from the The New York Times building in Manhattan. When sentenced by a federal court, Shahzad declared that Osama bin Laden "will be known as no less than Saladin of the 21st-century crusade". He further declared: "Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun. Consider me the first droplet of the blood that will follow."

Roger has also forgotten the attempts by al-Qaeda less than a month ago to send printer cartridges containing PETN, a highly powerful odorless military grade explosive, on flights to the U.S.

These two recent incidents are among those known to the public.

Cohen goes on to write: "America is a nation of . . . risk-taking." Notwithstanding Cohen's sensitivities involving full-body scanners, I think there are few Americans willing to take the risk of boarding a flight on which a determined enemy has hidden PETN.

Full-body scan or leave my family in an explosion at 30,000 feet? Sorry, Roger, if I choose life with the accompanying indignity.

[Query: Are op-eds at The New York Times subject to fact checks? Cohen's contention that "the enemy . . . has not contrived a single terrorist act on U.S. soil since 9/11" left me stupefied. Perhaps he reached this conclusion after speaking with Congresswoman Betty McCollum, who not long ago went on record as saying that "al-Qaeda no longer poses a threat to the United States" (http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2010/10/jg-caesarea-award-for-stupidest-member.html).]