1) Ahmed and his alleged handlers have concocted an elaborate scheme to make Texas Islamophobes look like assholes.

2) Texas Islamophobes are such assholes they have to concoct this elaborate conspiracy scheme to prove Islamists are out to get them.

Although I concede either of these possibilities is possible, (and there may be other alternatives, too.) I suspect option 2) is more likely to be true.

Here are my reasons:

a) This is Texas. And this guy Payne looks like your basic Texas wingnut redneck. See, I can be prejudiced too. You know how THOSE PEEPLE are, always looking for Liberal Conspiracies and coming up with phony evidence to debunk them. I know, my brother sends me their chain emails all the time. What else do you expect him to say? When you're caught doing something that stupid, you need to come up with a cover story right away. Your intended audience won't need much prompting to believe it.

b)I can't imagine why the fake-bomb-just-to-provoke-an-overreaction plot could have been expected to work in the first place. An electric circuit with an liquid crystal clock face doesn't look like a bomb, (even to a Texas science teacher)unless it is plugged into something that looks like an explosive, such as some simulated plastique or dynamite. Its highly unlikely everything needed to pull a scam like this in the first place could have been expected to work; too many things had to happen in sequence, and an 11 year old kid couldn't be trusted to knowingly pull off a frame as elaborate as this one. Mr Payne's evidence sounds convincing, but only if you believe he didn't make it all up.

Remember when the US Navy accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner? Immediately afterwards, but before the Navy confirmed the story, all sorts of conspiracies were "discovered" by the Right about how the Iranians had deliberately flown the plane into a battle zone (or alternatively), that there had been no plane at all, but that the Iranians had deliberately scattered bodies and luggage in the water just to accuse the US of an atrocity. Eventually, the Navy reported what actually happened, the plane was a regularly scheduled airline flight which was shot down in the confusion of battle (the ship had been fighting Iranian patrol boats at the time). The shooting was a tragic accident, no conspiracy on either side was involved.

Remember when the BP oil platform blew up in the Gulf of Mexico? Wingnuts were claiming it was actually an act of war by N Korean submarines which had stopped in Cuba. That chestnut was even proposed here on the Zone.

And remember how much evidence was presented to PROVE Obama was born in Kenya; whole birth certificate, the short form, the real birth certificate, then the school transcripts. There never is any shortage of elaborate conspiracy theories ready to prove anything they want.

They accused Dubya of blowing up the World Trade Center so he'd have an excuse to invade Iraq, and they claim the moon landing was faked, and the Holocaust was made up.

These people hate, and they lie. Because they are desperately trying to make a point.

Now can I prove this? No. Can I definitely say 1) or 2) or a) or b) is definitely wrong or right? No. I wasn't there. But if I had to bet on this, I'd much rather bet against Mr Payne than against Ahmed. It just makes more sense. And after all, It is Texas.