Posted on 05/31/2003 11:28:27 AM PDT by Aaron_A
"If that person had been a Norwegian businessman, he wouldn't be in the trouble Mr. Karim is in," Hooper said.
Oh, don't be so hasty. ansar al-Islam's Mullah Krekar is Norwegian and I wouldn't let him on a plane, either...
"It sounds odd that somebody up to no good would bring 32 razor blades, which would increase his chances of being detected, when all he needed was one razor blade if he wanted to do harm."
It seems odd to expect that a harmles person would need 32 razor blades, and if he was an honest person who had just goofed up, the razor blades would be in their original packaging and not hidden in a belt. Not to mention all the cock-and-bull stories the guy told about them. And why 32?
I'll tell you, Hooper, "why 32."
Whether this was a real effort to get on board to do harm or just a test, it's going to be much easier to slip enough razor blades for a team of terrorists through security if only one person gets on board. If security is randomly picking out people to search the chances of discovering one guy with 32 razor blades is much lower than catching several guys with their own razor blades. And after 911, the terrorists are going to need more people to control a flight than before in case there's some POPs* on board.
It also has the advantage, should the razor-blade bearer be caught trying to board, of letting the other cell members escape. Since they aren't carrying anything suspicious, it would be hard to come up with a pretext for detaining them. They live to terrorisze some other day.
Of course, if the terrorists can, they will use non-arabs to carry the blades, so as to avoid suspicion of there being more than one terrorist on board. In this respect if we profiled too much we would miss a Johnny bin-Walker cruising through.
* P#$$ed Off Patriots.
I was going to use them to cut something. I mean, I wasn't going to use them, someone else was. I mean, I didn't even know I had them in my bag. I mean, err... what's a razor blade? I've never heard of such a thing. I don't know how I got my airline ticket, either. Why was I even at the airport? How can you prove I wanted to hijack a plane if you can't even prove why I wanted to go to the airport? Help, help, I'm being racially discriminated against!
I'd be pretty sure that when a multiple weapon blockbuster like this turns up on a flight, every other passenger gets the triple scrutiny.
My favorite line in the story was:
It has been an ongoing concern that Muslims are singled out," Hooper said.
LOL! Well, when an Irish Catholic plows into the Sears Tower, we'll start pulling all of them out of line, too.
Good grief! Did they like the Democrat solution better? To send them all to internment camps till the end of the war?
So, pack them in your checked luggage. That is a totally bogus argument.
Even those are useful in keeping people nervous- there's no need to go for full-scale terrorism when you can hurt an industry by just putting out a little scare every so often.
The guy's not Joe Sixpack- he can't even keep his story straight on why he has 32 razor blades and no razor in his carryon baggage.
Scenario 3 is more likely. Richard Reid traveled around the Middle East with his shoes in dry runs to see if they could be detected, before his handlers put in the fuses and put him on a plane headed for the U.S.
Well at least this wasn't the case in 9/11. Even if it was true that only one of the men per flight was the boxcutter-bearer, most of the others had visa violations.
In the Pacific Islands, the islanders would make swords by embedding shark's teeth in a thin piece of wood
Take a pair of long, flat pieces of plastic, glue them together in the plane's toilet with the razor blades sandwiched between them, edges sticking out, and you have a moderately effective sword.
It can't be too hard to choose a "standard" location on all aircraft to hide blades which will not be noticed, but which can be found by future terrorists. Under the carpeting in the johns, behind fixtures, joints in trim, etc. Having one guy with an otherwise clean record make the deposits reduces the chances of discovery. On a trip with numerous connecting flights, blades can be dropped onto several aircraft and the frugal terrorist can even save money by buying tickets with numerous connections.
I hope they did check the other passengers to see if he had buddies.
It would probably be safe to say that Hooper is a slow-on-the-draw mouthy whiner that defends the Muslim position about as well as the Ratners defend libs.
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