It's like finding out there isn't a Santa Claus: A Terrorism experts debunks the show "24"

The other day, bored to fucking tears as I sat in the waiting room of some dickhead who wants me to write a screenplay based a book that he had written, I rummaged through his magazines the same way a kidnapper might do who wants to find specific letters to make the ultimate untraceable ransom note. I skimmed over Oprah's "O" Magazine but I wasn't interested in anything written in said magazine, the only source of entertainment that I got reading that rag was looking at the delicious derrieres of the Lane Bryant models on page 45. Sports Illustrated, some Gardening book, I couldn't find anything remotely interesting enough to take my mind off the fact that I was actually thinking about writing a screenplay about a couple of dudes and their crosscountry adventure.(When I told him it read like a ripoff of "Roadtrip", that silly fuck took that as a compliment) That's when I picked up an old issue of Rolling Stone with Kiefer Sutherland on it, and read something that is akin to a child sneaking down early Christmas morning only to see that the fat bald fuck that he/she calls dad is actually Kris Kringle himself. What I found, in an article that accompanies the main one featuring Kiefer, breaks down each season of "24" and the response of a bona fide terrorism expert.

I mean, I figured that a lot of the scenario's in "24" were improbable, and when I would ask my friends who work in "secretive" government jobs they wouldn't tell me anything(similar to how people act when you ask them about their personal fraternity initiations), but they would give off these cryptic sinister laughs. Oh well, this is from the April issue of Rolling Stone.

Even hard-core 24 fans realize that what Jack Bauer would actually be doing between 8.A.M. and 9 A.M. is sitting in L.A Gridlock. To assess the danger, we recruited former CIA analyst and U.S State Department Office of Counter-terrorism deputy director Larry Johnson.

SEASON ONE: Balcon baddies, with the aid of a CTU mole, plot to assassinate presidential candidate David Palmer and frame Bauer, payback for a secret Congress-sanctioned assassination mission in Kosovo.

THREAT ASSESSMENT: "The motive for the terrorism is credible," Johnson says, "What is really far-fetched is that shadowy mole in CTU"

SEASON TWO: A Middle Eastern terrorist cell attempts to detonate a nuke in L.A backed by U.S greed-heads who want to spark a war and benefit from skyrocketing oil prices.

THREAT ASSESSMENT: "Detonation a nuclear bomb is very difficult. Many so-called suitcase nukes only pack enough to blow a bridge. And it's a cheap Hollywood trick that evil businessmen are always pulling the strings behind the scenes."


SEASON THREE: Terrorists threaten to release a deadly virus unless an imprisoned drug kingpin is freed.

THREAT ASSESSMENT: "The myth of the deadly virus attack ignores the reality of biology. If the virus is highly contagious, it burns out, because it kills its hosts before it spreads too far. Plus, the notion that the government could respond quickly to contain the situation is comical in light of Katrina."

SEASON FOUR: Turkish terrorists kidnap the U.S secretary of defense and bomb a commuter train to swipe a device that can melt out nuclear reactors. To cover up its complicity, a defense contractor blacks out L.A...aiding the theft of a stealth fighter....that shoots down Air Force One...to obtain the nuclear football and launch a separately stolen warhead.

THREAT ASSESSMENT: "The only thing they left out is the alien abduction. It would be hard enough to pull off any one of those schemes, much less all of them in a twenty-four-hour period."

SEASON FIVE: Chechen rebels are trying to use nerve gas canisters to snuff hundreds of thousands of Americans.

THREAT ASSESSMENT: "For nerve gas to work, the area has to be saturated through aerial bombardment and artillery strikes, as in the Iran-Iraq war. Even if released in a mall environment, most would escape safely."

Steven Russell