According to the large and impervious-to-reason 9/11 Truther crowd, Al Qaeda is pretty much a fictional construct of the neocons. A hapless bogeyman concocted by the sinister BusHitler and friends, a.k.a. “the powers that be” (TPTB), to scare the “sheeple” into surrendering their freedoms.

Side Note: If you’re ever reading a blog post and the writer uses the acronym TPTB or the term sheeple, and they are serious, you can safely disregard anything that follows. Just back slowly away from that web page without making any sudden movements that might be interpreted as an Illuminati hand signal.

That brings us to the most recent attempt by Al Qaeda to blow up some commercial jets in mid-air. It now appears that was precisely what the Yemeni Al Qaeda cell was attempting to do. (I know, I know . . . that’s just what they want me to think.)

Today we learn AQ came astonishingly close to succeeding.

French and British intelligence have both confirmed that the cell phone to which the bomb on a UPS plane in East Midlands, UK was linked had 17 minutes remaining on its countdown timer when the bomb was defused.

Blowing up big planes in mid-air has been a dream of AQ planners going back well before 9/11. If you’ve read The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 which, by the way, still remains the best inoculation around against “9/11-was-an-inside-job fever,” you know that AQ’s Khalid Sheik Mohammed masterminded a nearly successful plan to blow up U.S. passenger jets over the Pacific back in 1995.

In know there are lots of people praying that these ongoing AQ plots will be exposed before they can bear fruit. Mark this one down as a win for the pray-ers. With a little help from the intelligence services.