Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding

Things you shouldn't do as a diplomat from Qatar while on a commercial international flight into Denver:  sneak into the bathroom to light a cig and then give the air marshal who asks you to sit down a sarcastic comment about lighting your shoe bomb.  Josh Marshall:

It was initially reported as an attempted shoe bombing. Next the idea was that it was what can only be called a very ill-considered joke on the part of the man taken into custody. Now it seems the guy in question was smoking in the airplane restroom and when the plane crew asked what he was doing he said something that sounded like he was saying he was lighting his shoe on fire. As you might expect, at that point all hell broke loose.


The reports remain contradictory -- whether he making a joke or simply misunderstood. But no one seems to believe he was trying to detonate anything. And they've apparently determined that there were no explosives involved. 

I vaguely recall this was basically the plot for Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay...


But I'm not really laughing right now.   At all.  This guy's a diplomat?  I'm thinking "not for much longer."