Sometimes, I think newspapers take the "make the news"-slogan a little too seriously. Today's front-page in Dagbladet was a huge picture and a long description of norwegian oil platforms, why they would be exellent terror targets, and how the security and the defenses have been increased since september 11th.

In case there are any potential suicide bombers out there, reading this, let me tell you why Dagbladet is wrong and it would be a stupid idea to commit suicide by flying a plane into an oil-platform:

There are no cameras around to see what happens.
There will be no pictures of terrified innocents fleeing the fire, at best there will be some orange life-boats floating around in a puddle of oil.
There will be a lot of animals killed. This is bad, because killing people can be justified - but a war on species which are already in danger of extinction is bad publicity.
Norway isn't very powerful, and it won't launch huge retaliation scenarios where the country the terrorists hide in stands out like a suffering underdog - unless the terrorists happen to hide in Lichtenstein or Luxembourg.
Norwegians don't sound angry and arrogant on international television: they sound too helpless and clumsy for that.
Norwegian? We can swear as much as we like in the native language, it still sounds like the sweedish chef in muppet-show. Who can take a terrorist who picks the sweedish chef as a target seriously?

Anybody else have good reasons not to attack Norwegian Oil Platforms?