No guarantees this is true, of course...
Posted on 08/16/2006 3:34:12 PM PDT by ZGuy
Last week, British authorities arrested 24 members of a terrorist cell plotting to blow up about a dozen U.S.-bound planes simultaneously. As a result of those arrests, we learned:
Nothing being done by airport security since 9/11 would prevent a bomb from being brought onto an airplane; and
This terrorist plot -- like all other terrorist plots -- was stopped by ethnic profiling.
Last week marked the first official admission that everything government airport screeners have been doing until now is completely pointless -- unless you're an airport security guard with a thing for women's undergarments, in which case it's been highly effective.
As we now know, all the ingredients necessary to blow up an airplane can be carried in small liquid containers. Airport security has not even been looking for small liquid containers. Judging from my personal experience, they seem to have been focusing on finding explosive devices inside women's brassieres.
After five years of submissively complying with bag checks, shoe checks and underwire bra checks, Americans have now been informed that the hell we've been going through at the airports (but which the president and members of Congress do not go through because they refuse to fly commercial air) has been a useless Kabuki theater.
The procedures that have wasted millions of hours of time cannot keep the most basic bomb materials off an airplane. This is like locking your windows to prevent burglaries, while leaving the front door wide open.
Airport security has been using metal detectors to confiscate sharp objects that could be turned into make-shift weapons, which could then be used by terrorists to commandeer control of a plane and fly it into a building.
Except the terrorists can't do that because we've seen that trick before.
After 9/11, airline passengers will never allow a half-dozen terrorists to take control of a plane again. Indeed, on 9/11, passengers on Flight 93 prevented terrorists who had already been given control of the plane from flying it into a building after hearing what had happened to the first three hijacked planes.
To pull off a 9/11-style attack now, literally half the passengers on the plane would have to be terrorists. (At least the airport screeners wouldn't have to worry about confiscating a lot of deodorants.)
I think a planeful of Arabs would attract attention -- except from people who had recently completed a government training program teaching them not to notice anyone's appearance. Not even a group of liberal Democrats flying off to a Renaissance Weekend would stand for that.
The sole objective of airport security post-9/11 has been to accomplish the impossible -- remove all sharp objects from a plane -- in order to prevent an attack that won't ever happen again. (OK -- well, that and finding out what color of lingerie Ann Coulter prefers.)
The plan seems to be to make flying so unpleasant that terrorists -- like the people who write laws about airport security -- will refuse to fly commercial air. On that theory, we could also keep terrorists off planes by forcing passengers to undergo root canal surgery before boarding, making them stand on their heads for an hour, or enacting an "all Whoopi Goldberg in-flight movie" policy.
What stopped last week's terrorist attack was ethnic profiling. We don't know the details of the British intelligence work that nabbed the 24 Muslims because The New York Times has not been able to obtain that classified information and publish it on its front page yet. But it is a fact that you could not catch 24 Muslim terrorists by surveilling everyone in Britain equally.
Without the ethnic profiling going on outside of airports, no security procedure currently permissible inside airports would have prevented a terrorist attack that would have left thousands dead.
Airplanes, ports, bridges, subways and shopping malls cannot ever be sanitized against every type of attack that can be dreamed up by fanatics engaged in asymmetrical warfare. We have to target the fanatics themselves. Baby formula doesn't kill people. Islamic fascists kill people.
No guarantees this is true, of course...
I wish I had his abs but my gaydar says that is where it stops....
Ping to the weekly Coulter.
pinging you to comment no. 2
"Or, just have two sets of planes. One for people offended by racial profiling (which does not use commonsense profiling procedures), one for those who are not (which does)."
Wait! That is the best suggestion I've heard. Do what cvq3842 suggested and see which planes have the most passengers. I'll bet that set 2 is full of people wanting to reach their destination alive, and that set 1 has a few people on it, bleeding-heart liberals and some individuals who really want to crash the plane and kill infidels. This will definitely answer the question of "should we profile?"
Somewhat like "Would you put a sign on your door that says 'no guns inside'?" And your neighbor has an NRA sticker...
It's black. How could you fail to notice?
Ideas on screening? Why not start every security line with ham on rye hors d'oeurves?
No, not just this one, the one about the Fantasy Lingerie, up in comment #41 above !!
Trust me, she likes pink.
'The plan seems to be to make flying so unpleasant that terrorists -- like the people who write laws about airport security -- will refuse to fly commercial air. On that theory, we could also keep terrorists off planes by forcing passengers to undergo root canal surgery before boarding, making them stand on their heads for an hour, or enacting an "all Whoopi Goldberg in-flight movie" policy.'
LOL!
Perhaps if the airplanes sold lots and lots of deodorant and sprayed nice-smelling perfume everywhere, the terorists would be driven away from the planes.
I think by now the terrorists have gotten so used to their own disgusting stink that they probably find perfume to be a fatal smell.
Great cartoon.
And just too true.
Like someone was telling me, they ban everything but the most important which is Middle eastern men in their 20`s. Bottles of water, deoderant and shampoo are seen as more of a threat. Meanwhile Mohammed is working on his next plan which is probably C4 hidden in his watch with a blasting cap in a pen.
Methinks there has been significant mammary enhancement beneath the leather undies. Was the photo work done by Reuters?
They are probably upset because they know damned well that the laptops, cameras, and IPods will be on EBay in 48 hours.
OK -let me get a piece of paper.
Dear penthouse forum:You may not believe this, but I was an airport security screener and Ann Coulter approached me with her carry-on luggage.......
I'm very sorry, but Ann swore me to secrecy...
Thanks! I don't know that I'm the first to suggest it, but I'm glad to mention it.
It's a miracle that more hasn't happened.
You make some good points, but old or not, they were GOING to carry it out, and I think at least half of them would have succeeded, maybe more.
Profiling is fine with me, but there are many terrorists or would be terrorists who don't fit the profile.
Maybe it makes people who fly feel safer. I don't know. At least they are doing something.
Ceramic blades? Maybe if enough on board had them. Passengers would jump some now they wouldn't have before, blades or no blades.
I don't have all the answers, but the airlines have to be made as safe as humanly possible. These new stringent measures are costing them more money, but if there are many more incidents, people will not fly as much.
9/11 would not have happened if they had found the boxcutters. That much I know. It won't foil the most determined ones who will come up with something, but at least we are busting up some plotters which is a darn good thing.
That's part of it, and it is airline personnel who are swiping it. They are also worried about rough handling; don't blame them a bit for that. Overall damage rates are low, but if it happens to you then that is a different matter because it is very difficult to insure those kinds of things for travelling.
People have seen them dropping baggage from five feet watching out the plane windows.
Also a lot of people who travel for business use their laptops while they are in flight. That's down time for them. Can't even take a book or magazine in the UK. Maybe they will ease up on the restrictions in time.
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