Which is more worrisome: that our defenses aren’t as good as we think they are, or that the government is willing to lie to us about it?

From the initial Washington Post story about the Tampa plane crash, 1/6/02:

Capt. Kirstin Reimann of the North American Aerospace Defense Command said two F-15s were scrambled from Homestead Air Reserve Base as a precaution, but he declined to say whether they reached the scene before the crash.

From a follow-up story, 1/8/02:

The military command that sends fighter jets to respond to acts of terrorism did not learn of Saturday’s flight of a private plane into a Tampa office building until after the plane had crashed, officials said yesterday.

Turns out that the FAA decided that it wasn’t necessary to contact NORAD, since local authorities were on the case; therefore, it’s not the fault of the military that they didn’t get there. But I’m very concerned that every report prior to this one strongly implied that the jets were on the way.

If we have to take homeland news with this much salt, how bad is the Afghanistan news for our blood pressure?