In response to my latest rant on the possibilities that the terrorists are either unimaginably moronic, or that they want us to think that they are, and that both possibilities seem incredible, an anonymous reader offers an alternative explanation, to wit:

You know, maybe they aren't that stupid. What if they were browsing the web some day and came across it. "Hey Abdul, you need to read this, it's so funny!"

Then it got left behind. And we thought they were serious. Just wait until the archeologists of the future start talking about the significant news outlets of our time. "Most people got their weekly news from The Onion, America's most respected source, while other chose the New York Times or the satire and comedy paper, The Wall Street Journal."

Well, it is a third alternative, but given all the available evidence on offer, this seems to be a particularly humorless crowd, so to the degree that it is a viable explanation, it seems as astronomically improbable as the others. I've still gotta go with the theory that they really are major-league, world-class, galactic-championship-grade imbeciles...