Free Republic

As I wrote here in December: "One thing we have seen over the years since 9/11 is that airport security is always one step behind the jihadists: after jihadist Richard Reid attempted to set off a bomb hidden in his shoes, we all have to take off our shoes and send them through security scanners. After a group of jihadists tried to sneak onto planes explosive chemicals hidden in drink bottles, we can't carry drinks through airport security terminals. Because Abdulmutallab attempted his jihad attack just before the plane landed, now we can't get up during the last hour of...

We now know the Russian planes were blown up by 1) women 2) from the toilets. This dovetails ominously with a six month old report from US intelligence that Al Qaeda was recruiting female terrorists to smuggle 8-12 ounces of explosives inside their vaginas, then extract them and assemble the bomb and detonate it from toilet. More here, including the likely effect on the racial profiling debate.

The Ministry of Interior reports on the explosives two weeks later.ETA Used Amonal or Amosal Mixed with Hexogen to Increase the Destructive Power in the Attack at T-4 [Barajas Airport Terminal #4] The attack at the parking of the T-4 terminal in the Barajas airport, that perpetrated ETA the last December 30th, was carried out with a mix of explosives, one of inorganic nature, with a nitrate base, like amonal or amosal [or ANFO], and the second, hexogen, as a multiplier of the detonating effect with the objective of increasing the destructive power, according to the information provided this Saturday...

Aug. 28, 2004 — MOSCOW (Reuters) - Explosives have been found in the wreckage of the second of two jets which crashed almost simultaneously this week, Russia's FSB security service said on Saturday. "Additional examination of the fragments of the Tu-134 aircraft which crashed Tuesday ... has revealed traces of hexogen," an FSB spokesman said by telephone. The FSB said Friday that hexogen, more widely known as RDX, had been found in the wreckage of the other plane which crashed Tuesday in southern Russia.

Wreckage of a Tu-154 airliner is seen at a crash site near Gluboky in the Rostov region some 600 miles south of Moscow, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2004.(Sergei Venyavsky/AP Photo) — Suicide bombers, in precision attacks, destroyed two Russian domestic airlines, which killed 90 people Tuesday, U.S. sources told ABC News. Traces of explosives found in one of two downed Tupolev planes match explosives used in the 1999 bombing attacks of Moscow apartments by Chechen separatists, according to two U.S. government sources. These sources told ABC News that according to reports received by U.S. investigators in Moscow, suicide attacks are...