By Matt Schofield, The Kansas City Star editorial page columnist
French Defense Minister Herve Morin Tuesday refused to rule out terrorism as the cause for the Monday disappearance of Air France flight 447 in the mid-Atlantic.

Speaking on Europe Radio 1, he said "We can't rule out a terrorist act since terrorism is the main threat to Western democracies, but at this time we don't have any element whatsoever indicating that such an act could have caused this accident."

It would be surprising at this point if terrorism had anything to do with the flight tragedy. No one has made a claim of taking the plane down, at least not publically. As the entire point of terrorism is to create terror, it seems to go against logic.

But the disappearance goes against logic in many ways. This is the plane crash that we're told simply doesn't happen. It was mid flight, at cruising altitude.

It didn't occur on take off, or landing, which renders useless the whole "count to 85 seconds" rule (which is supposed to reassure nervous fliers, as that is when planes most commonly crash.

The distress signals showed some electrical failures, and a loss in cabin pressure, but not to a degree that it was immediately obvious what happened.

The flight was moving through a monstrous thunderhead, but aeroautical experts seemed dubious about that as the cause (many have noted that airliners routinely take lightning strikes, and without disastrous outcomes.

The Airbus was a newish one. The pilot was an experienced one. Even the flight seemed a routin-ish one. Until it didn't. And now searchers are racing out to a position in the Atlantic above about 9,000 feet of water.

I can understand the French reaction, sending a team to investigate any possible terrorist link. At least that would make some sense, would explain why 228 people died.

It's an odd thought, really: A terror attack would give some level of comfort to fliers, because at least there would be a reason.