A recent episode of the crime drama Tatort, which airs on taxpayer-funded German television and is watched by 7 million viewers, portrayed the brutal attacks of September 11 as the work of President Bush.

A recent episode of the crime drama Tatort, which airs on taxpayer-funded German television and is watched by 7 million viewers, portrayed the brutal attacks of September 11 as the work of President Bush. The story centered on a brave woman who was compelled by circumstance to wage battle against the world's true source of terror after discovering in her apartment the body of a man trained by the U.S. to participate in 9/11. Naturally, American agents set their sights on her. While the woman was initially dismissed by those around her, she was, in keeping with the tired old plot of nearly all conspiratorial hallucinations, ultimately vindicated when German authorities came to accept the credibility of her account. This type of tale clearly resonates in a nation where, according to a poll published in Die Zeit, nearly one-third of Germans under 30 believe that the U.S. itself may have been the principal actor behind 9/11. Let's not be too hasty to look down on the delusions of the Arab world. Countries reputed to be rational, and allied with us, share a disturbing number of them.