Unidentified Flying Threats? REDUX

The folks must be growing increasingly restive about the Obama candidacy. The NYTimes had this crunchy little morsel in this past week's op-eds.

The United States is no less vulnerable than Britain and France to threats to security and air safety. The United States Air Force or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should reopen investigations of U.F.O. phenomena. It would not imply that the country has suddenly started believing in little green men. It would simply recognize the possibility that radar alone cannot always tell us what’s out there. A healthy skepticism about extraterrestrial space travelers leads people to disregard U.F.O. sightings without a moment’s thought. But in the United States, this translates into overdependence on radar data and indifference to all kinds of unidentified aircraft — a weakness that could be exploited by terrorists or anyone seeking to engage in espionage against the United States. The American government has not investigated U.F.O. sightings since 1969, when the Air Force ended Project Blue Book, an effort to scientifically analyze all sightings to see if any posed a threat to national security. Britain and France, in contrast, continue to investigate U.F.O. sightings, because of concerns that some sightings might be attributable to foreign military aircraft breaching their airspace, or to foreign space-based systems of interest to the intelligence community.

I love these articles. To me, they're like tchotchkys of the collective unconscious. I expect we'll be seeing lots more such bon mots in the weeks and months to come as the perfect storm afflicting the economy and the American body politic gathers strength. The American political theater will prove jarringly impotent in dealing with the encompassing reality corrections - so it's time once again to inject a little mystery and awe into the otherwise steady diet of bread and circuses...., Originally posted August 2, 2008.