Wow, this really seems to be out of control -- citing a story in the Winninpeg Free Press, a poster at Democratic Underground tells us this:

3 Doctors returning to Winnipeg on a connecting flight from Denver were forced off their flight earlier this week. One was Muslim. All were dark skinned.

A passenger in front of them who was drunk at the time, claimed he heard one of them state "I have control of the aisle now" They were then questioned by the FBI and TSA security let them go shortly after checking things out. However they missed their flight and still had to overnight in Denver because their ordeal with no compensation. These passengers want a full investigation through the government on this....

I can't read the full story -- the firewall for non-subscribers at the Free Press is like the old Berlin Wall -- but a search yields the start of the story:

MDs forced off plane
THREE young Winnipeg doctors -- one a Muslim -- were kicked off a flight home from Denver earlier this week after a passenger falsely identified them as a terrorist threat. Dr. Ahmed Farooq, a fourth-year radiology resident, and two physician friends want an apology from United Airlines and assurances staff will be better trained to identify genuine threats. Winnipeg Centre MP Pat Martin has also asked federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day to raise the issue with his counterpart in Washington. "It's the most egregious example of this device of racial profiling I know about among my constituents," said Martin. "These are valuable, upstanding members of our society. Civil rights shouldn't be collateral damage in this whole fight against terrorism." But officials with United Airlines say they are obliged to take any allegations threatening passenger safety seriously, particularly in a period of heightened tension like the one following last week's discovery of a British terrorist plot targeting transatlantic ...

I get that when I search "doctors" and when I search "drunk" -- so I suspect the DU summary is accurate.

If it is, that's just wonderful -- we now take the word of a drunk over the word of three doctors, if one of the doctors is a dirty filthy Mooooslim.

(There's also a brief Toronto Sun story here. The Sun says they were returning from San Francisco, where they'd been taking a course.)

You know what? That plot in England is referred to as a "failed plot," but it's not a "failed plot." Those guys succeeded. They've got us chasing our tails and running around half-crazy. They've got us pissing off law-abiding Muslims like this doctor, which has a ripple effect -- to younger Muslims in Canada and the U.S. and Europe, every story like this is one more sign that we hate all of them. The British plot worked like a charm.

Which is ironic, because, as this grimly funny and wonderfully detailed article makes clear, the plot as we've had it described to us -- a plot to mix TATP in flight -- was virtually impossible to pull off.

Either the plotters had no idea what long odds they faced, which means they're dumber than we realize, or they knew and didn't care, because their real bomb was a fear bomb -- which hit the center of its target.

Or, worse, they really were stupid, and they got us anyway.

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Right-wingers would surely respond to the above by pointing to this:

Two suitcases containing bottles of gasoline, propane gas and a detonating device that were found abandoned in German regional trains last month were bombs primed to go off and kill a "high number'' of people, police said....

A suitcase found abandoned on a regional train from Aachen to Hamm in western Germany was turned in by the train's conductor in Dortmund. It contained a propane gas bottle, three bottles filled with gasoline and a detonating device, the Federal Prosecutor's Office said Aug. 1. On the same day another piece of luggage was found on another regional train from Moenchengladbach to Koblenz about 75 miles to the South. It too contained a propane gas bottle....

But watching for unattended packages on public transportation is smart. Forcing doctors on their way home from taking a course to deplane on the word of a drunk? Not so smart.

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UPDATE: Read the full Free Press story in comments. It's as bad as I thought. (Thanks, H.S.)

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UPDATE: Via slothropia, here's a story on the incident from the CBC (which includes a photo of the decidedly not menacing-looking Dr. Farooq).