Portugal rejects sky marshal call

BBC NEWS ^ | 1/06/04

[cynicom]

Tell them to stay in Europe then.

[JudgemAll]

Do not fly with these people. They are too stupid to understand the fundamental of safe flight, i.e. calculated risk. And they are too stupid about guns to realize that sacrifices of enemies and risks must be taken with guns to save the innocent.... of course it is easier to send aborted babies and WTC victims to terrorist Baal

[JudgemAll]

The childishness of socialists - everything to them is an abstraction; everything in this would is merely fuel for their pissant and vainglorious moral vanity.

Exactly, they could care less about hard evidence and science, what they only want is to go with the imagined suspicion of danger of the gun. They take other forms of security for granted and they provide stupid alibis for justifying inaction and going on strike.

[JudgemAll]

The problem is - Do you trust the intel services to KNOW which flight is really at risk? The Intel services, as needed as they are, do not have a good record of really being on top of things. Sky marshals are needed on ALL flights, if they are going to be effective.

Yep, I trust the NCO in Iraq to tell me the truth, not the UN diplomats or desk drivers at the intel service of Spain and all.

[sd-joe]

Yes, tactical intelligence is good. Military intelligence is good. It is at the CIA and International level that intelligence stinks (in large part because it was messed up by Clinton and other Demonrats over the years). And for the most part, it is not tactical military intelligence that is trying to figure out who is getting on a flight in Paris or London.

[sd-joe]

I agree with what you are saying, but I think we need a stronger solution to the problem.

>> "If there is a credible threat to a flight, cancel the flight." <<

What if the "intelligence" about the flight is wrong. What if the "intelligence" says flight 93 is threatened, but it is really flight 96 that is the target.

Flight 93 gets cancelled, and flight 96 goes boom.

[sd-joe]

Oh please - Iraq a diversion.

Iraq was a very very smart strategic move.

There was a lot of expense in the area before the actual war. Maintaining the no-fly zones was costing billions. Maintaining troops in SA was costing a great deal. And there was no end in sight - ever.

[tracer]

"A better course would be to cancel any flight against which there was a credible terrorist threat, it argued."

Done, Mateuse notwithstanding...

[marktwain]

We could have waited a year and put all the Iraq war money into getting rid of Bin Laden and his crowd.

What are you smoking? If we had waited a year, it never would have happened. With all the opposition from the French and Germans, and the fifth column media in the U.S., the political pressure to assume that we had "won the war" and put our heads in the sand would have been overwhelming. Bush and his administration were brilliant to push the war when they did. It was the only realistic strategic and political choice.

Terrorism comes from the middle east, specifically Saudi Arabia and Iran. Taking Iraq into our camp alters the situation from a gradually deteriorating one for us to one with a strong chance of improvement over time.