Posted on 08/11/2004 10:32:23 PM PDT by sockmonkey
The fact he wreaked of chemicals from toilet would concern me greatly, is what you say possible?? Could a bomb be placed there to go offf months in advance? Don't they empty those septic tanks on plane, or could one be lodged in there and not come out??
Have you notified Northwest Airlines of that possibility if you have that kind of expertise??
I recall that these people flagged by the woman in FL had to be chased down by the cops (i.e., they didn't just stop when asked) and went through a toll booth during the chase. I'm not convinced that they weren't jihadists.
Hopefully the FBI is keeping close tabs on them now. I recall their annoying grandstanding about anti-muslim discrimination after the incident. People have lost sight of what real discrimination is.
I've got a simple question: How does a 450 seat theatre at a third tier casino support flying 12 musicians on two one-way legs across the U.S.?
As a follow up, suppose this guy IS the "Syrian Wayne Newton." Are his fans going to show up in Bumf**k, CA at an Indian casino nobody ever heard of for this show?
Gee, sorry if I'm a "prick" for pointing out the numbers don't work.
An improvised explosive built in-flight by an Islamist terrorists did kill a japanese man in a plane flying over the Pacific. It might have brought down the whole plane had the explosive been a bit stronger.
Nobody better say this was "unimaginable."
Control of an aircraft comes control of the cockpit. Any plan to deal with terrorists that does not take this into account from the start is starting from a disadvantage. The bad guys can threaten to kill hostages, but flying into a target of choice will accomplish that anyway. The bad guys can threaten to blow up the aircraft, but again flying into the target makes that an empty threat. The more people between the terrorists and the cockpit, the less chance they will ever get to test the security of the cockpit door or any of the pilot's final defenses.
I went back and re-read the original Women's Wall Street article, in addition to the NRO update and have concluded this incident could hang together either way, musicians on the way to a gig, terrorist supporters casing security, terrorist operatives executing and then aborting an attack.
There's nothing damning in foreign travellers exchanging looks and nods on recognition in a country far from home. Even more likely if two seperate groups link up knowing that they are liable to be onstage together in the future. "I know who you are, I know we are going to be working together, but we haven't been introduced, so all you get is a look and a nod." It's a guy thing.
The McDonald's bag is easy to explain as well. "Abdul, here's twenty bucks, grab us a bag of burgers while I make sure the shuttle busses are going to meet us at LAX." With time to kill some of the food is eaten, the empty wrappers or styrofoam boxes are stuffed back in the bag, once on the plane, the bag holder, tired of his unwieldy baggage dumps the trash in the lav, realizes there's a burger or two left, and, on his way back to his seat, offers them to a buddy, who accepts.
If the musicians were drinking, maybe not standard behavior for Muslims but certainly standard behavior for musicians, then they would probably have been waiting anxiously for the seatbelt sign to be extinguished so they could make room for more beers. What other group besides musicians is liable to be drinking in the middle of the day onboard a DET-LAX flight?
Experienced flying drinkers know that it isn't unusual to sit on the tarmac at busy airports like LAX for a good while before being assigned a gate, and might well have made that last trip to the lav on the FA's descent announcement individually, without advance planning.
But here's the rub.
The flight was met by TSA, FBI, FAM and local police, who questioned the musicians extensively.
Somebody tipped them off. Somebody on the aircraft. Although it could have been a passenger with a cell phone, odds are it was the crew or had crew confirmation and here's why. Passenger calls in to report suspicious activity, authorities are going to take care of odds and ends but near the top of their priority list will be a talk with the captain on board. If he says the passenger is having paranoid vapors, there isn't going to be a phalanx of dark suits meeting the aircraft at LAX.
That means that the captain, at the very least, admitted to somebody on the ground, sometime during the flight, that the men's activities were questionable. It means that either the captain or else designated crew members, either cockpit or cabin crew, saw something that set off internal alarms, something that just wasn't right.
We already know that several passengers felt the same tingle, and I'm willing to make a decision based on that factor alone.
Something wasn't right on that flight.
Al Qaeda is well known to have begun using "scrubbed" support operatives in the US since 9/11. Clean passports, no arrest records, no terrorist affiliations, scrubbed. These people rent safehouses and vehicles, make introductions, carry important messages and cash from place to place, all legal activities but in support of possible future terrorist attacks.
Travelling musicians who don't have drug convictions would make excellent terrorist support personnel.
The catch is, support people don't know anything. They aren't ordered to "buy the tickets for the suicide bombers on the September 11th flight that will crash into the North Tower." They are told to buy tickets, period. (Yes, I know that support personnel didn't buy the 9/11 tickets, but that's not the point) What do you gain from taking support drones to Gitmo and breaking them? The name of their handler? Abu al Sudani from Khartoum? What good does a fake name in a distant city do you? I think you'd get a better return on your investment just putting them on a clandestine watch list, seeing who they hang out with, where they go, and what they do.
Not being hard core terrorists, it wouldn't surprise me if a support drone cracked during routine questioning, agreed to provide continuing information on his low level contacts within Al Qaeda.
So what, exactly, does Women's Wall Street want?
An admission from the FBI that the support drones are being followed 24/7?
President Bush announcing that we now have a low level plant inside Al Qaeda?
In sixty point headlines in the New York Times?
I'm not putting down WWS, but pointing up something common sense and experience tells me. If you pass information regarding a terrorist attack on to the authorities, you will only get feedback if your information turns out to be baseless. It's part of the deal. You only know you scored when the good guys go silent. Not very satisfying on a personal level, perhaps, but do you only turn in terrorists in hopes of receiving a medal? Of course not.
So where does all this bring us?
Right back to where we started.
Whether they are casing a plane, or actually executing an attack, control of an aircraft requires control of the cockpit. If you accost or harras the suspects in any way, you better hope they have bombs or box cutters or something that implicates them in concrete, or all the TSA bureaucracy is going to fall on you when you disembark. You will be viewed as being part of the problem of the whole air security package.
If you make an overt move, prior to the initiation of a terrorist attack, you become a high priority for the attackers.
But there's no law against talking to other passengers. there's no law against keeping a pair of burly guys flirting with the FAs by the forward galley and/or waiting for the lavs.
The front row seats are usually reserved for crew rest during the flight unless the aircraft is fully booked, but they rarely have time to sit down. "Really mean leg cramps" and a polite smile can get you the seat to stretch out for a good while if you ask right.
Just like a bar fight, the first few moves, in many cases the first move, is going to decide who goes home with the girl.
You can't wait till things turn ugly to decide how you are going to handle it. The bad guys don't. They train and they plan and they practice. Our advantage is that we have numbers on our side, and that we can, if we so choose, mitigate their main advantage, which is surprise. We can plan just as easily as they can. No harm in thinking, it isn't against the law.
You can haul out your queen in the first few moves and probably lay waste to some pawns and maybe a few major pieces, but grandmasters usually don't play that way and there's a reason for it. You need to know in advance what you are looking for, what it will take to ramp up to the next level, what the various levels of response should be, and at what level you will openly confront a problem.
Six "P's"...Prior Preparation Prevents Profoundly Poor Performance.
Pinging again because we need to pay attention again, even if this is an older story in the land of news and infotainment.
If I were the author of the article that set this off, I'd be annoyed at the lack of answers. Being a reader, I'm curious as to what it means. You have provided a pretty good theory of what it means.
One thing about your theory: Either there was no air marshall on board, or the tip off about these travelers came well before their activity on this flight.
They could at least acknowledge receipt of the message and thank the correspondent, and let them know if they're needed, they'll be interviewed (even an autoresponder could do that). I don't think that's asking too much, baseless or not.
As for rules of conduct on the plane, I'm guessing that there are already rules against excessive time spent not seated, against bringing anything except yourself and medications into the bathroom, etc. Every airline has a company policy that you're supposed to keep your seatbelt on at all times when you're seated.
And I'm also hoping that these things are being reviewed for tightening up by the carriers and the TSA
Casinos in Las vegas don't come close to breaking even on entertainment or even try. Their take is the drop at the gaming tables brought in by headline acts. Not sure this applies to Cali casinos or to Ali and the Bedouins.
The WWS lady got more than an acknowlegement, she was directly interviewed for several hours by her own account.
I think the earlier poster had it right...she broke the story, got attacked by some factions, and now is defending herself, at the same time as not understanding that she isn't going to be brought all the way inside on the downstream, because she doesn't have any need to know.
Odds are very great that none of the people she has spoken with since have any need to know either, so it becomes a case of the blind leading the blind and also trying to CYA.
The typical price for a show done by someone you might have heard of at that casino is $20-$40. Figure the theatre is 2/3rds full on a successful night and...
There ain't no way.
Oh man. $35 will get you a hot night of Cheap Trick.
Check it out.
More to the point, "ethnic" shows like "Vietnamese Night" (and you have a lot of Vietnamese in Cali) are $20. And the talent is probably local.
The Syrian Wayne Newton my turquoise buckled ass.
Bump.
If there are more than two Arab guys on your flight when you board, turn around and get off.
They are still running around this country with impunity.
Look at that raghead taking photos of bank buildings in NC. If it weren't for a sharpeyed local cop, he would have got away with it and sent his casing photos directly to Achmed in Pakistan for the "Next Big Thing".
Racial profiling is a NECESSITY.
This is scary stuff.
Recently, I E-Mailed the first couple of articles to a liberal female acquaintance that I have flown with on work-related, business trips. Shortly thereafter, I received an E-Mail containing an article from the VILLAGE VOICE about how the ACLU is protecting our rights from the FASCISTS like Bush and Ashcroft who are using the WOT to create a police state. Furthermore, the ACLU is protecting us from the despicable racial profiling that these right-wingers want to initiate.
I give up.
"Where's the cowboy spirit these days?"
Saddle up!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.