Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
So screams this Fox News headline, taken from a report in The Sun.
Female homicide bombers are being fitted with exploding breast implants which are almost impossible to detect, British spies have reportedly discovered.The shocking new Al Qaeda tactic involves radical doctors inserting the explosives in women's breasts during plastic surgery -- making them "virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines."
It is believed the doctors have been trained at some of Britain's leading teaching hospitals before returning to their own countries to perform the surgical procedures.
I've got a couple good reasons to doubt this. First, the article says they're using PETN as the explosive, the same material used by Abdulmutallab in the Christmas Day attempted underwear bombing. That material has to be lit on fire, remember; that's why he failed, because he set himself on fire and still did not ignite the explosives. Seems to me it would be a hell of a lot more difficult to ignite the stuff inside the body.
The second reason? Look who the quoted "expert" is:
"Women suicide bombers recruited by Al Qaeda are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery," Terrorist expert Joseph Farah claims.
Color me skeptical.
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Comments
Since when has Farah been a mamber of MI6? Wouldn't that mean he has divided loyalties? Who side is he on? And why does he hate 'merka so?!?!elevtenty-one!! -Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | April 5, 2010 12:14 PM
“Terrorist expert”. Ooh. Fancy official-sounding title, that.
Posted by: Joé McKen | April 5, 2010 12:17 PM
It's priceless, and it's got everything to hook a Fox audience: irrational terrorist fears, emotionally-laden buzzwords like "shocking" and "radical," and boobs!
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | April 5, 2010 12:19 PM
Also, what's with the "female homicide bombers?" Didn't they used to be called "suicide bombers?" Is there some underlying message they're trying to send here?
Posted by: Geds | April 5, 2010 12:21 PM
Didn't they used to be called
Wow. Me fails English. That's unpossible!
Posted by: Geds | April 5, 2010 12:24 PM
Fake boobs are simple to detect just by sight. Generally, even clothed. How tough can it to employ an American teenage boy at every departure gate?
Posted by: kehrsam | April 5, 2010 12:24 PM
And in related news. Dolly Parton and Pamela Anderson stopped at airport security due to fears of exploding
underpantsbreast implants*.Jesus Haploid Christ on a popsicle-stick, exactly how moronic can the right-wing get? - Dingo
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* Al-Quenda - Still using old copies of Viz Magazine as training manuals since 1998. [vertigo-inducing eye roll].
Posted by: DingoJack | April 5, 2010 12:29 PM
Sadie, I only noted one boob. They claimed he was an expert terrorist, or something like that.
Kehrsam, better make that bi-sexual teens.
Posted by: Abby Normal | April 5, 2010 12:30 PM
similarly, counterfeit dollars are simple to detect --- just look for the word "monopoly" printed on them. it all depends on the skill of the craftsman/surgeon (and the tastes of the patient ordering the implants), really.
but there may be a real concern here; if this sort of rumor were to catch on, can you imagine the sorts of countermeasures that would be used and/or called for? misogyny galore, i'd guess.
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | April 5, 2010 12:31 PM
I thought radical Islamists had a problem with male doctors treating women. There was a story awhile back about British Muslim medical students who refused to learn how to treat women (or alcoholism). Or are these supposed to be female radical doctors who are implanting bombs in other women's breasts?
Posted by: Origuy | April 5, 2010 12:37 PM
careful, it's a booby trap!
Posted by: anomalous howherd | April 5, 2010 12:39 PM
Wouldn't fake beer guts make more sense. Now days no one thinks twice about some one with an extra 20 or 30 pounds.
Posted by: Mr Ed | April 5, 2010 12:40 PM
Sounds like an excuse for airport security staff to grope female passengers. (Even more.)
Posted by: Arancaytar | April 5, 2010 12:45 PM
Sounds like someone wants an excuse for more examinations.
Posted by: Björn Lindström | April 5, 2010 12:45 PM
So now WND is going to write up the story on it citing the Fox story citing Sun citing Farah as authority, and then some other right wing media source is going to pick up on it citing multiple sources, and then Fox will pick up on it again and ask, why isn't the liberal, leftist media picking up this well documented story?
Posted by: el donaldo | April 5, 2010 12:47 PM
Fox News lifting an article from The Sun quoting Farah?
This is simply a prime example of stupidity cubed. I wonder if the day's Page Three girl was a suspect?
Posted by: Ray M | April 5, 2010 12:49 PM
is the breast they can do?
Posted by: anomalous howherd | April 5, 2010 12:53 PM
The hacks at Fox News a few years ago decided that they would rebrand "suicide bombers" as "homicide bombers", apparently because the word "suicide" might evoke sympathy from someone somewhere. Yes, there's an underlying message. It's just a very stupid one.
Thankfully, this particular insult to the English language never caught on; it was too Orwellian even for Fox News. But it still pops up now again thanks to the hardwired, unthinking message discipline that some Fox News "journalists" are afflicted with.
Posted by: Steve Reuland | April 5, 2010 12:57 PM
Fox News wanted to remind people that there are victims when people blow themselves up as if people might forget that when they hear the word "suicide bomber." But they obscure their point because most criminal/terrorist bombers are homocide bombers regardless whether they blow themselves up. If people blowing themselves up intending to take others with them are "homocide bombers" what does that make the criminal/terrorist bombers who kill people without blowing themselves up?
Posted by: Bill in NC | April 5, 2010 1:19 PM
Gizmodo had this story a few days ago. They point out that, not so coincidently, the "experts" say that the only way to detect these explosive breasts is with the full-body scanners that the security industry is trying to install in airports. Of course, I doubt Fox would point out that association.
Besides, there is no way to ignite the explosive while it is isolated inside the body. You would need cables leading outside the body, and those cables would be detectable using current technology - unless the would-be terrorist tried to set themselves on fire, in which case it seems that would be a problem in itself.
Posted by: Radical Nerd | April 5, 2010 1:20 PM
Jennifer, the Feral Genius, wrote about this a couple of days ago, too.
Posted by: James Hanley | April 5, 2010 1:47 PM
I think he saw BATMAN: Dark Knight one time too many.
"Excuse me miss, is your breast ringing?"
Posted by: dogmeatib | April 5, 2010 1:52 PM
...if this sort of rumor were to catch on, can you imagine the sorts of countermeasures that would be used and/or called for?
I wouldn't be surprised if al Qaeda themselves started this rumor, just to induce panic in the airport-security folks, which would then lead them to adopt yet another layer of ridiculous draconian reactions, which would then cause huge amounts of trouble between security personnel and passengers, which would then have results similar to actual fear of terrorism on airplanes.
Seriously, the way we're reacting these days, they don't have to buy any ordinance or blow anything up to scare us into total paralysis.
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 5, 2010 2:09 PM
Is that the breast they can do?
Posted by: Benjamin Geiger | April 5, 2010 2:09 PM
Worst Pick Up Lines Ever.
"Ma'am, I am going to have to check those for explosives."
Posted by: Holytape | April 5, 2010 2:22 PM
Holytape, as bad as the pickup line is, years of research has lead me to conclude that the worst pick-up line ever is in fact, "Baby you look better than a new set of snow tires. Mind if I jerk off on your tits?"
Just sayin'
Posted by: Abby Normal | April 5, 2010 2:27 PM
But if James Farah is right they will need lots of volunteers at airport security check points to make sure that all women have real breasts!
I hereby volunteer. For love of country, of course!
Posted by: Reverend Rodney | April 5, 2010 2:28 PM
Mr Ed | April 5, 2010 12:40 PM:
A beer gut does not arouse the same level of interest and excitement in Mr. Farah. In particular, Mr. Farah does not fantasize about searching beer guts for "bombs".
Posted by: llewelly | April 5, 2010 2:30 PM
One thing here, and i'm no "expert" like Farah, is that PETN doesn't need to be "set on fire" to explode. There needs to be the creation of a supersonic self propagating blast wave for the material to explode, or else it will just burn.
When the Xmas Underpants bomber mixed the chemical in his syringe he either didn't inject enough, or didn't do it fast enough to create said shockwave, therefore it just burned and didn't explode.
Posted by: Willd | April 5, 2010 2:40 PM
I just don't get why any woman would die for Islam, especially extremist Islam. But then I don't get Phyllis Schafely either. I mean what could a right wing, mysogynistic religious rhetoric possibly hold for any self respecting female?
Become one of us, and we'll treat you like shit, cause god told us you are only slightly better than a used up old whore, and that is only if we can make sure you don't fuck anyone you aren't supposed to.
Uh?
Yep, still not getting it.
Maybe we should start sending them exploding dildoes.
Think that they might get the message?
Posted by: Seeing Eye Chick | April 5, 2010 3:34 PM
Wasn't that the same trick the Terminator used to attack the human resistance?
Posted by: ged | April 5, 2010 3:39 PM
"There needs to be the creation of a supersonic self propagating blast wave for the material to explode..."
I think I saw a stripper that could do that once. Odessa, Texas, I think it was,....
I'll shut up now.
Posted by: Coragyps | April 5, 2010 3:41 PM
Thanks for the Mammaries-
With bits of tit here and over there
Thank you so much!
Posted by: Pacal | April 5, 2010 5:00 PM
Posted by: Gamma Rayburn | April 5, 2010 5:00 PM
yeah the correct term for the self propagating wave needed for detonation is called brissance
explosives with that particular property, most powerful modern ones, are usually mixed with another more easily activated explosive to create that wave to set off the other.
so the underpants bomber didn't set himself on fire to make an explosion, the fire happened because when he injected the chemical into it to create a reaction, it didn't create the wave and pressure needed to detonate it and instead it just burned. so any breast implant bombs of petn would require some sort of detonator.
BTW, media matters has a short article on this called something like "Fox News and British tabloid play the telephone game" sorry no link handy.
Posted by: Willd | April 5, 2010 5:04 PM
And once again we get all caught up in security theater, assuming that the Bad Guys are dumb caricatures of the Three Stooges. Or in this case, the Three Boobs.
The totally inappropriate choice of explosive agent was one clue -- as long as it's being wrapped up in a sealed container in a human body, why not use a real explosive?
The better one, though, and what makes it obvious that the objective is headlines rather than safety, is the "breast implant" angle.
To check that one, just ask yourself: do serious smugglers use breast implants to get important contraband across the border? Nope. Never. They use other, larger, better-covered, nonsurgical body cavities. With balloons.
One good laxative onboard the flight (or if you only want limited quantities and insist on using women, one pull of a string) and you have all the high-grade explosive you could want, and none of the security techniques in use today would come close to spotting them.
Anyone who wants a few thousand more examples like this could ask a sophomore engineering class anywhere in the world.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | April 5, 2010 5:17 PM
Third reason: the story is in the Sun.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | April 5, 2010 5:21 PM
Please tell me motorboating is nowhere near the right frequency. I still can't swim in the ocean without the jaws music popping into my head at some point. Don't ruin that for me too.
Posted by: Abby Normal | April 5, 2010 5:27 PM
(Shocked that no one beat me to this, but oh well)
Won't someone think of the boobies?
Posted by: BaldApe | April 5, 2010 5:28 PM
You might like Esther Friesner's latest anthology -- due out in November, I believe.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | April 5, 2010 5:29 PM
"MI5 has also discovered that extremists are inserting the explosives into the buttocks of some male suicide bombers."
That must be painful to sit on.
When I read this I thought of an April 1 joke, with the wrong date. If not, perhaps there is someone out there trying to sell magic wands to detect explosives inside body cavities. Or just to bring the security theater to its logical end, bypassing the step, where we all have to strip naked to be allowed on a flight.
Posted by: A | April 5, 2010 5:31 PM
Which still wouldn't ensure safety but would certainly accomplish the terrorists' objectives nicely.
Bob Heinlein's ghost would be laughing his discorporate head off -- "Operation Sunshine" indeed.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | April 5, 2010 5:36 PM
He-he.
When the first Exploding Jihadi Breast takes American lives, we are all going to wish we had proactively taken the matter into our own hands, as true patriots.
Posted by: Gingerbaker | April 5, 2010 5:56 PM
If this story came from the Sun, they should get some real good Page 3 photos out of it.
Posted by: anon | April 5, 2010 6:22 PM
JihaDD!
Posted by: Anonymous | April 5, 2010 6:33 PM
Really? You just let that "homicide bomber" shit go right by?
Posted by: Jonathan | April 5, 2010 7:07 PM
Seeing Eye Chick "But then I don't get Phyllis Schafely either."
She got to be a big fish in a small pond. One where she advocated excluding the other fish. Good work, if you get in early.
"Maybe we should start sending them exploding dildoes."
Do you know how much it costs to ship the House and Senate? Firey partisan rhetoric aside, most of them don't even explode. Poor quality control, really.
D. C. Sessions "Anyone who wants a few thousand more examples like this could ask a sophomore engineering class anywhere in the world."
O_O
Sophomore engineering classes must be pretty messed up.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | April 5, 2010 7:14 PM
Tell me. If they had their brains engaged, it wouldn't be thousands -- it'd be millions.
The whole point of engineering is to figure out how things can go wrong and reduce the incidence to an economically acceptable level. The fact that engineers are, by temperament, fascinated by catastrophic failure and the fact that they can do things [1] is just the way the world swings.
Counterterrorism needs people who can think like the Bad Guys. Fortunately there are lots of candidates; my boys attended the school where EMRTC [2] does a lot of counterterrorism training. I know that the US government is paying a lot of people who actually know how to penetrate security and get spectacular results, partly because I know some of them.
I also know that they're completely ignored when it comes to policy.
[1] Whether they should or not is something else entirely, and cost me some of my high-school friends.
[2] Take the time to check out the videos.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | April 5, 2010 7:32 PM
As a youngish engineer (who spends too much time cooped up with same), I can tell you that a favorite drinking game involves coming up with the most impressive plans to cause general mayhem using only the equipment visible in the room. It is indeed how the engineer brain works. Fortunately, the same temperament is less likely (in general) to be crazy/deluded enough to actually do so.
(Okay, we can be pacified into building some pretty nice weapons if you give us enough shiny equipment to play with. Sorry.)
Posted by: Sunflower | April 5, 2010 9:00 PM
It sounds like someone too an April 1 prank too seriously. Then again, Fox always sounds like that.
Posted by: MadScientist | April 5, 2010 9:06 PM
And you know what? The greybeards like me still roll that way. In the blood, I tell you: when my sons are around a favorite topic of conversation is how to induce catastrophic failure with horrific results.
Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is totally optional.
So how many things can you and your buds think of in the one beer session that would bring down a plane? Extra points for in plain view.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | April 5, 2010 9:45 PM
MadScientist - April Fools just gets earlier & earlier every year!
This year it fell, apprently, on or before, March 24th (see linked WND article in the leader) - Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | April 5, 2010 10:02 PM
Anyway, there's no real need to be alarmed by what the 'Chicken Littles' at WND (and the Sun) are freaking out about.
I bet it'll turn out to be nothing but a storm in a D cup. - Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | April 5, 2010 10:10 PM
My fave was The Codfish Bomb from the first season of I Spy. Kelly and Scotty are trapped in a store room waiting for the Bad Guys to do evil to them. They only have ten minutes. Scotty looks around for something they can use to escape, and finds a sack of nitrogen fertilizer, a jug of household ammonia, and a crate of codfish packed in dry ice. He fills an empty shoebox with fertilizer, saturates it with ammonia, and tops it off with a chunk of dry ice. I guess that was just to keep the mixture cool because at room temperature it might go off spontaneously. He makes a fuse from one of Kelly's cigarettes and the matchbook, which burns down just as the Evil Henchperson comes back for them. BLAMMO!!
I was a teenager then, and believed everything.
Posted by: ChicagoMolly | April 5, 2010 10:22 PM
D.C. Sessions
I want that on a T Shirt.
Posted by: Militant Agnostic | April 5, 2010 10:36 PM
The "homicide bombers" thing is so epically stupid. Most bombers are homicide bombers. Timothy McVeigh was a homicide bomber. The unabomber was a homicide bomber. The NRA are homicide bombers. But they are/weren't *suicide* bombers, which is a significant tactical difference that makes them harder to stop and more effective.
Such idiocy. Murdoch's 'news' employees would plunge icepicks into their own frontal lobes on air if they thought it would be politically advantageous for Republicans.
Posted by: Jon H | April 5, 2010 10:42 PM
Ok, seriously deadatheist. Your repetitiveness and sockpuppetry makes your position even less convincing than it already was. I don't live in your universe - you already live in your own reality. Go back to the sanatorium where you belong.
Posted by: Ryan Egesdahl | April 5, 2010 11:52 PM
I noticed our pal M*bus now has his own blog on Open Salon. And guess what -- today he posted the exact same BS, on his own blog, that he just posted here.
Twice.
That's all anyone needs to say about M*bus.
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 5, 2010 11:58 PM
Media Matters, citing this blog post, traces the development of this story, which apparently has been bouncing around since late January. According to them, the WND variant traces back to one Gordon Thomas, a purported "London-based correspondent with deep contacts in British intelligence", but apparently a 'Mossad killed Princess Di/Robert Maxwell & did all sorts of other improbable and nefarious deeds' fantastist.
Stale paranoia and speculation, rejuvenated via patently unreliable sources, and given dubious respectability via a large tabloid. This 'story' is now being reported from Seattle to India.
Posted by: Hrafn | April 6, 2010 12:49 AM
I bet this story could be traced back to "Curveball". :) - Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | April 6, 2010 12:57 AM
Oh dear God. They're taking this from The Sun?
For those not familiar with the British breast-obsessed tabloid in question (there were a couple of references I saw earlier in the thread but I don't know how many people this side of the pond caught the significance), the publication is famous for it's daily page 3 feature which consists of a full page photograph of a topless model. Hence the reference to "page 3 girls". That pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the newspaper.
The tip off about the reliability of the Sun's article is probably in the title: "Radicals' deadly booby trap". That and the horribly photoshopped picture of a breast implant containing a comic book "bomb" pretty much tells you everything you need to know.
Posted by: Brain Hertz | April 6, 2010 1:08 AM
Fembots v.2.0
Posted by: wheatdogg | April 6, 2010 1:10 AM
Exploding boobs?
Wasn't this on Mythbusters?
Posted by: Twin-Skies | April 6, 2010 1:58 AM
Oh. I read it on Bruce Schneier's blog first. It was on April 1st. I was certain, absolutely certain, that it was a clever April Fool's joke he had invented. Seems that, once again, reality is stupider than fiction.
Posted by: Christophe Thill | April 6, 2010 2:02 AM
Here's the 'original' published March 23, 2010. - Dingo
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Note the line in the header. That's tells you all you need to know about the Sun's creditability.
Posted by: DingoJack | April 6, 2010 3:45 AM
I traced this story back to a speculative column in Forbes in January. Basically, someone wrote "after the underpants bomber, perhaps someone could use breast implants". This then morphed into "Al-Qaeda is planning to use breast implants", and then "Al-Qaeda has used breast implants".
Posted by: Bartholomew | April 6, 2010 4:51 AM
And, we should also point out that The Sun is part of Rupert Murdoch's vast media empire. Can you hear the echo?
Posted by: wheatdogg | April 6, 2010 5:16 AM
Bartholomew - The earliest I can find is this (sorry can't link because of an error on the page):
"1 Feb 2001 - Busted: British spy agency warns of breast implant bombs. Los Angeles"
daymix.com/Silicone-Gel/ - United States
Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | April 6, 2010 5:20 AM
Sorry I looked at that page in cache and the story was from 2010.
The earliest I could really find is here from 2002. Enjoy - Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | April 6, 2010 6:00 AM
Next thing the scaremongers would say that Terrorists are having penis to TNT replacement surgeries. Any operator looking through a body scanner would just assume that the guy is just one hung Arab.
Posted by: Teddydeedodu | April 6, 2010 6:14 AM
Oh, I don't know. If the opportunity ever came up for me to have, say, little machine guns or grenade launchers implanted in my boobs I'd be all over it. Death rays would be even better!
I don't know about bombs, though. That doesn't sound like nearly as much fun.
Posted by: Leni | April 6, 2010 9:43 AM
what about the fembot machine guns?
or the Inspector Clouseau knives?
bewbs are teh d3adly
Posted by: VikingMoose | April 6, 2010 9:59 AM
Posted by: amk | April 6, 2010 4:41 PM
Posted by: amk | April 6, 2010 4:45 PM