[UPDATED] About those terrorist “dry runs” ... Ummm, not so much

When the Transportation Safety Administration released a safety bulletin last week, it referred to several “recent suspicious incidents” under the sensational headline, “Incidents at U.S. Airports May Suggest Possible Pre-Attack Probing.” Unfortunately, there's a little discrepancy between the bulletin and reality. Notice the highlights I've made in the two descriptions of this event.

From the July 20th, 2007, official TSA bulletin:

5 July 2007, San Diego, CA–A U.S. Person’s (USPER) checked baggage contained two icepacks covered in duct tape. The icepacks had clay inside them rather than the normal blue gel.

However, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, San Diego Harbor Police Chief Kirk Sanfilippo said that wasn't exactly the case. In fact, it's not accurate at all:

Sanfilippo said a routine swab test of the bag indicated the presence of a chemical that is sometimes used in explosives or medications. Inside the luggage, inspectors found cold packs, wrapped in clear packing tape, that were old and leaking.

Sanfilippo said they weren't covered in duct tape and didn't have clay inside of them. “It is a little bit off,” he said of the bulletin.

The chief said a Harbor Police officer found what appeared to be hardened old gel that had seeped out of the ice packs and dried, leaving a clay-like substance around the outside edge of the pack.

I don't know if the Bush Administration thinks that we will all live in a constant state of fear and therefore follow their lead without question. My personal reaction is becoming one of total disbelief in all of these possible terrorist activity stories. And I'm not so sure that's such a great thing either, to be so jaded that I don't take any of it seriously anymore.

Everyone knows the story of the little boy who cried “wolf,” don't they?

UPDATE

As for the cheese incident (not to be mistaken for the String Cheese Incident) at BWI airport, that too is now sounding like an exaggeration of the facts. Today's Baltimore Sun reports that officials are trying to downplay the reports of a possible dry run by terrorists. Although the TSA bulletin has a picture of a block of cheese with some kind of electronic device apparently taped to it inside some plastic, I personally doubt that is a photo of the actual items in question from the BWI incident. According to the Sun:

... a couple's checked baggage contained a block of processed cheese and a charger for a DVD player, which might have substituted for bomb components.

Jonathan Green, a spokesman for the Maryland Transportation Authority Police, said “Every indication was that they were not a threat as passengers.”

It sounds to me like this couple had in their luggage: (1) a block of cheese, and (2) a DVD charger. But not that they were necessarily attached to each other. So this photo distributed by the TSA with their bulletin on July 20th seems more than a little misleading:


Am I getting paranoid? What are your thoughts on this?