Ambassador Bridge Bomb Threat: Dan Stamper Says Blame Canada!

A bomb threat shut down the Ambassador Bridge for several hours Monday night. The bomb threat was made around 7:15 last night and the bridge was closed until about 1:00 AM.

It's the kind of thing where everyone just wants to work together to resolve the issue, secure the bridge, and reopen the crossing to traffic. Certainly no one, especially Detroit International Bridge Company President Dan Stamper, would use this situation to score cheap political points with wild unsubstantiated speculation.

Oh wait, that's exactly what Stamper did. Even though authorities determined the call came from the United States, Stamper issued a statement (before the bridge reopened) blaming Canada for...well...for their refusal to stop cranks from calling in bomb threats, I suppose. Stupid Canadians and their lack of superpowers.

"We cannot confirm, but suspect, that this has something to do with Canada’s disinvestment at the border by cutting back on customs’ agents," Stamper wrote in his statement emailed to media Monday night.

We cannot confirm, but suspect _____________ is a really fun phrase because you can literally follow it up with anything. Consider these purely hypothetical examples.

• We cannot confirm, but suspect Craig James killed five hookers while attending Southern Methodist University.
• We cannot confirm, but suspect country music legend Kris Kristofferson is actually one of the lizard people.
• We cannot confirm, but suspect that an unnamed executive for an unnamed corporation that owns an unnamed piece of transportation infrastructure regularly procures the services of transgendered Filipino prostitutes.

All of these assertions are recklessly false and should be treated as such. Indeed, I invented the last one about executives and transgendered hookers out of whole cloth. But thanks to the "cannot confirm, but suspect..." phrasing, I can say pretty much any reckless thing and, when it's debunked, weasel out of responsibility for my words. After all, I totally said up front I couldn't confirm anything. It was just a suspicion. 

So, what the hell: It seems that everything's gone wrong/Since Canada came along/Blame Canada! Blame Canada!