al Qaeda Air Raids Already Underway?

....or "merely" a dry run testing yet another gaping hole in our defenses?:

Investigators in the United Kingdom found a bomb disguised as a toner cartridge aboard a plane flying from Yemen to Chicago when it stopped in London on Thursday night – one reason for heightened concern at U.S. airports on Friday, a law-enforcement source with detailed knowledge of the investigation said.

Two UPS cargo planes at Philadelphia International Airport and another at Newark International Airport are being examined for questionable shipments, the company said. One of the planes at Philadelphia came from Paris, the other from Cologne, Germany, UPS said. The plane at Newark also arrived from Cologne.

I tend to doubt the "dry run/test" hypothesis because it's self-defeating: if they have any opening, why not attack full scale and for real, since once you take any action the likelihood is that the hole will quickly be plugged?

However, there may be more method to the madness than immediately meets the eye.  Ensign Ed:

Assuming this story gets substantiated, it may put a big dent in international trade.  The vulnerability was always present in shipping on sea and in the air; six years ago, the lack of inspections at American ports became an issue in the presidential election.  If packages have to get opened before flights, even just from a few origination points, it will raise the cost of trade substantially for everyone — which is, of course, the entire motivation for targeting the cargo systems.

And at the worst possible time economically, with the U.S. economy about to be toppled into a depression by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.  And let's not forget the temporal proximity to the mid-term elections just four days away.

And if any of these "suspicious" devices are "live" and do significant explosive damage to their targets, that's gravy.

UPDATE: Yep, there were "live" ones.