Is the power grid the next target?

Michelle Malkin is blogging about the blackout in Queens:

Have you heard about the nightmare in Queens? Some 100,000 people are without power and have been blacked out for six days straight. And there's no end in sight.

This is too bad for the people without power, but what I find interesting is this from the New York Times:

Utility officials and others said this power failure was perplexing, unlike previous blackouts that darkened large swaths of the city and were corrected in a day or two. This time, new problems have cropped up day after day: dozens of manhole fires, transformer fires and, most seriously, electrical cables' burning out and needing replacement.

"This is a very strange phenomenon," said Joe Flaherty, a consultant to Local 1-2 of the Utility Workers Union of America.

Chris Olert, a Con Edison spokesman, said, "We'll take those cables that were damaged and analyze them, but until then, we won't know what happened.'

The blackout has exposed an apparently serious weakness at the utility: its inability to measure the size of a problem.

I have to wonder if this is an exercisecercise by terrorists. Try it out on a small scale and learn two things. One, if your methods work and you can do it and get away with it and two, what the authorities will do in response.

If this turns out to be the case I can only imagine that the terrorists are encouraged.

UPDATE:

A friend who lives in the area tells me that if there is sabotage going on the most likely suspects are not al Qaeda, but Con Ed employees looking for some serious overtime pay. This does fit in with the modus operandi of Northeastern labor unions.