Dude, your pants are on fire!

They've begun the trial of Umar the undie bomber today in Detroit. You may remember Umar. Couple of years ago, Christmas day, he sets his shorts alight on an airplane approaching Detroit.

Today's witnesses at the trial recounted how they tried to alert the inert Umar to the fact his pants were aflame. "Hey dude, your pants are on fire!" I don't know about you, but that would get my attention. Pants on fire? Usually when I think my pants are on fire I know right away it's a bad case of you-know-what from I'm-not-sure -who that I met at the bar the night before. But I know that stays in my pants. It doesn't get the rest of the passengers to feeling threatened.

But not in Umar's case. They've got him dead to rights. Operative of the same Al Qeida that outsmarted the entire USA defence establishment on 9/11. How do you go from outsmarting the entire USA defence establishment to Umar, too fucking retarded to set off the bomb in his underwear? Doesn't make much sense to me.

Maybe it's a testament to how much we've degraded  the al-Qaeda. After all, ten years of drone attacks and waterboarding and secret prisons in Libya have got to count for something. Maybe the evil-doers are just getting to the bottom of the recruitment barrel, just like we are.

Maybe. Maybe not. It ain't just hapless Umar on trial here. It's the entire USA defence apparatus.

And I'm guessing they'll put up a good defence.