Cold Comfort

The Detroit Free Press is quick to assure locals that their city "may not be the target" of the jihadi who tried to--but due to the quick thinking of his fellow airline passangers didn't quite manage to--hook up with his heavenly honeys:

So was Detroit the target of the man who officials say was set to blow up a Delta Airlines plane on Friday?

 Probably not, said U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a Holland Republican and ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee.

“I think we’re looking at a target of opportunity, not specifically wanting to hit Detroit as the preferred location,” he said Saturday.

Northwest, Delta and KLM airlines offer a wide variety of international flights and with Detroit being a hub for Delta, which merged with Northwest earlier this year, it was a logical destination.

The attempted attack on the flight that originated from Amsterdam and landed in Detroit about noon, was thwarted by passengers on the plane. The suspect — Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab — is being held at the University of Michigan Hospital burn unit and is expected to be charged today.

Mutallab probably waited until the end of the flight to try and detonate his device, Hoekstra said, because the flight takes the polar route and doesn’t enter U.S. soil until just before it lands in Detroit.

A "target of opportunity," eh? To a jihadi that pretty much describes the entire U.S. of A., doesn't it, Pete? But I suppose it might be a comfort to the good folks of Motor City to think that their burg was not a specific target. (Incidentally, isn't the proper terminology a "Dutch" Republican, not a "Holland Republican"? The latter--how did that one sneak past the Freep's editor?-- kind of sounds like the name of a conservative cruise ship line.)