[honway]

At the time of 9-11 it was not ONLY the government's responsibility. As part of deregulation, the airlines agreed to share the majority of the burden

The airlines did not refuse permission to the Minneapolis FBI office to look at the 20th hijackers laptop. That was FBI Headquarters. The laptop had sufficient information to have alerted the government to the 9-11 plot.

Exactly what burden did the airlines fail in? The FAA permitted box cutters on flights, that was not an airline rule.

[Beck_isright]

The airlines strongly opposed profiling because they "feared" it would cause lawsuits from potential customers. Please refer to post #182. They had a chance in 1998 to reform and instead of investing in infrastructure and cooperating with the FAA, FBI, CIA, etc., they elected to increase pay for employees, executive bonuses, and bribes to Congress to prevent implementation of any of these suggestions. Sorry, I'm not letting them off the hook. You can, that's your call. But if a corporation or an individual fails to take preventative action that could avert a disaster then they should be held responsible.