Burn Ward.
Spoke Neal Boudette, WSJ, Detroit Bureau Chief, re the detention and arraignment of the Flight 253 suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutullab. Earlier today, Neal Boudette called at the Ann Arbor hospital where the suspect is being held, in the burn ward. To some surprise, Neal Boudette was able to walk all the way into the ward and to the suspect's room. He reports the man was lying motionless in a darkened room, his head turned away from the door. No IV, no tent for burns. At that point, a Federal agent, likely FBI, asked Neal Boudette to leave the area. Later, a Federal judge arrived at the room and an AP and local TV reporters were invited to witness the arraignment. Suspect was charged with Federal crimes. Suspect was seated at the araignment, with a blanket over his lower body. Not sedated or unable to respond. Judge asked suspect if he understood the proceedings and the suspect answered "Yes." Judge asked if the suspect had money to hire an attorney, and the suspect answered he had "no funds." Suspect was arraigned in the hospital and is expected to remain in hospital at least another day.
Airport Security Little Changed So Far.
Later Saturday 26, Douglas Laird, retired from Northwest Airline security director, and Larry Johnson, No Quarter, explained that no airport security extant is correct to apprehend what is presumed to be the mode used by the suspect at Amsterdam's airport, where the suspect passed through three first-rate screenings. What would defeat the mode is a body scan machine, which are not in use. Possibly a full body pat down, but not necessarily. The body scan is not practical because of cost per machine (more than $250k each); and the full pat down is not practical because of time, unless you also permit profiling. In sum, the suspect defeated all the screens between Lagos, Nigeria and wheels down at Detroit airport. Later, Jeff Bliss, BlissIndex.com, reported that there was little change in security at several major California airports, SFO, Oakland, LAX, San Diego. Perhaps the TSA is catching up on the reports. Jeff Bliss did mention the report that passengers coming from overseas are reporting long lines boarding US bound aircraft. Do they know that the delays do not solve the threat? Only a full body scan can solve it, or individual full pat downs. Nothing else.
Ah, the money quote:
>the full pat down is not practical because of time, unless you also permit profiling
Yes, it is so much better that our wives and daughters get felt up by otherwise unemployable TSA goons while some creep named Umar Farouk Abdulmutullab gets a comfy seat right over the main fuel tank than for us to use the same profiling system that El Al does--because that would mean we are as evil as the terrorists!
RED FLAGS: HE BOUGHT THE TKT W/CASH. HE HAD NO LUGGAGE. HE HAD NO RETURN FLIGHT. HIS FATHER WARNED THE AMERICAN EMBASSY IN NIGERIA ABOUT HIM.
If the above as reported is true, the suicide bomber should have been detected by a routine investigation. Supposedly, another red flag: The bomber bought the tkt at the last minute -- but this can't be true because he wouldn't, then, have been able to get the seat he wanted -- 19A.
I was at JFK for an int'l flight after the shoe bomber was caught. We didn't have to take off our shoes, because there was a 'shoe machine' -- but no one knew how to use it -- so we just walked through w/our shoes on.
All the new rules being introduced this weekend are just the gov't trying to make us believe it can stop a terrorist attack. Like bank regulations -- we don't need new rules. We just need the rules we already have to be properly enforced.
AL QAEDA’S ATTEMPT TO BLOW UP PLANE OVER US
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.595
B.RAMAN
From additional details of the attempt on December 25,2009, by a Nigerian member of Al Qaeda to cause an explosion in a plane of the US North-West Airlines flying from Amsterdam to Detroit as it was approaching Detroit to land there, it is evident that it was not a lone wolf terrorist attempt by an angry individual Muslim to give vent to his anger against the US. It was an attempt by Al Qaeda’s command and control to cause a spectacular incident involving mass casualties in the US air space and possibly US territory in order to demonstrate to the US and the rest of the international community that Al Qaeda remains strong and active despite the leadership losses suffered by it in the Af-Pak region during 2009.
2. The target was the US homeland and the audience was the US public, whose confidence in the revamped counter-terrorism set-up of the US might have been shaken had the Nigerian whom Al Qaeda trained and used succeeded in causing an explosion. The credit for the fact that the aircraft and its passengers escaped what could have been a disaster should go to some passengers of the plane and its crew, who acted promptly and with bravery after the terrorist suspect had attempted to cause a detonation, which remained incomplete in the sense that it caused only a fire and not a full-blown explosion. They overpowered the suspect and put out the fire and the flight crew managed to land safely.
3. Since 9/11, Al Qaeda has repeatedly tried to carry out another major terrorist strike against the US in the US Homeland, and had infiltrated many groups and individuals from Pakistan and elsewhere into the US for this purpose. An alert Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) thwarted these attempts. It detected and neutralized the cells, which were seeking to act as the Trojan Horses of Al Qaeda in the US Homeland.
4. Al Qaeda also sought to attack the US by targeting US-bound flights in order to cause mass casualties if not on the ground, at least in the air. Its 2001 attempt to have a Miami-bound plane blown up through shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who had concealed the explosive in his shoes, failed under circumstances similar to those of Detroit due to malfunctioning of the device and the alertness and courage of the passengers and the crew, who intervened to prevent a disaster.
5. In 2006, it again tried to have a number of planes bound for the US from the UK blown up with the help of some persons mainly from the Pakistani diaspora in the UK who were instructed to carry material capable of being converted into explosives into the aircraft by concealing it in soft drink bottles and use it to cause explosions. The alertness of the British intelligence and security services thwarted this attempt while it was still in the planning stage. The would-be perpetrators were arrested and prosecuted before British courts. One of the would-be perpetrators, Rashid Rauf, a British citizen of Pakistani origin from Birmingham, who was based in Pakistan was used by Al Qaeda to orchestrate this conspiracy. He was related by marriage to Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of the Jaish-e-Mohammad.
6. He was arrested by the Pakistani authorities, who avoided handing him over to the British for interrogation and prosecution. He escaped from custody under mysterious circumstances and was ultimately reported to have been killed in a US drone strike in Waziristan.
7. Despite the failure of its previous two attempts to blow up US-bound planes with the help of suicide bombers, Al Qaeda has not relented in its determination to strike at the US in its homeland----- either on land or in its air space. This is the chilling message from the Detroit incident. The failure of the attempts involving Richard Reid and the latest Detroit incident on Christmas Day (December 25,2009) were due to circumstances beyond the control of Al Qaeda and not due to the effectiveness of the security measures at the Schiphol airport of Amsterdam or the alertness of the Western intelligence agencies.
8. What should be of concern to governmental and non-governmental security experts all over the world is the fact that Al Qaeda’s conspiracy almost succeeded in that the Nigerian trained by it in Yemen managed to evade the security screening at Schiphol airport and carry concealed on his body, reportedly in his underwear, a high-grade explosive and a syringe with a chemical trigger to detonate it. Even after 9/11, on air flights diabetic patients are allowed to carry syringes and insulin on the basis of a certificate issued by a doctor, but the airport security have no way of verifying the authenticity of the medical certificates carried by a passenger.
9.Citing US security sources, sections of the media, including the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), have identified the explosive material carried on board the aircraft by the suspect as containing PETN, also known as pentaerythritol, a high grade explosive. Did he carry it concealed in his underwear as reported by sections of the media or inside his anus as was reportedly done by an Al Qaeda terrorist trained in Yemen who tried to kill the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister in August this year? The device inside the anus of that terrorist was reportedly triggered off by a remote control device. Did the Nigerian use the syringe to trigger off his device?
10. Even at the time of the attempt to kill the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister, counter-terrorism experts had warned of the implications for airline security of the new method of concealment devised by Al Qaeda. The security set-up of the Saudi Deputy Minister totally failed to detect the presence of the explosive material inside the anus.
11 The Nigerian, chosen by Al Qaeda for its latest attempt, has been identified as 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, allegedly the son of a serving or retired banker of Nigeria, who has reportedly identified his son. It is reported that till 2008 he was studying engineering in a college of London and then disappeared from the UK. He seems to have come into contact with Al Qaeda during this period and undergone training in Yemen.
12.The suspect came from an affluent family of Northern Nigeria which since 2007 has been showing signs of becoming another recruiting ground for Al Qaeda.
13.The Reuters news agency disseminated the following report on May 10,2008: “Al Qaeda Islamist militants have renewed their threat to bomb targets in Nigeria, , a newspaper reported quoting the national police chief. The United States embassy in Nigeria said last September the country was at risk of "terrorist attack" and Osama bin Laden once named the world's eighth biggest oil exporter as ripe for jihad or Islamic holy war. "The al Qaeda network has threatened to send time bombs to Nigeria ... CPs (commissioners of police) of all the commands should be on the alert and ensure that these items (bombs) do not pass through their end," the Punch newspaper quoted Inspector General of Police Mike Okiro as saying. He gave no details of what the targets might be, but he told a group of senior officers that intelligence reports showed the threat was real. A number of suspected jihadists have been arrested by police and the State Security Services (SSS) in recent years, but the cases have dragged on in the courts and there have been no convictions. No conclusive evidence of al Qaeda's presence in Nigeria has been made public. Five Islamist militants with suspected links to al Qaeda are on trial in the capital Abuja for plotting attacks on government targets in Africa's most populous country. The men were arrested in November (2007) by the SSS in mainly Muslim northern Nigeria. Three of them have also been charged with training in Algeria with the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) between 2005 and August 2007.The GSPC renamed itself al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in January 2007. The charge sheet said the five militants, all in their early 30s, "did conspire to commit terrorist acts," and said three of them trained in Algeria "with intent to attack government facilities and cause insurrection in Nigeria". Another charge said the militants had an AK 47 rifle, ammunition, dynamite, fertiliser "and 11 explosive devices" which they planned to use to attack government facilities and installations in the southern cities of Lagos and Ibadan.”
14. The alleged infiltration of Al Qaeda into Northern Nigeria was preceded by the spread of the ideology of the Taliban in the local Muslim community. An Islamic fundamentalist movement which disseminated the ideas of the Taliban became active. It was referred to by the locals as the Boko Haram movement. Boko Haram means “Western education is sinful.” It strongly opposed Western education as anti-Islam. Its founder Mohammed Yusuf, who was reportedly Iran-educated, was alleged to have been killed by the security forces, but the movement started by him, which is also referred to as the Nigerian Taliban, has remained active.
13. Shortly after the world came to know of the Detroit incident, a non-Governmental organisation of Nigeria known as “Citizens For Nigeria”, which is believed to consist largely of representatives of the Nigerian Christian community, put out the following statement: “Today, we heard of a Nigerian, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, who said he was an agent for Al Qaeda and tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane as it was preparing to land in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The Citizens for Nigeria can predict that when Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab's identity is revealed, he will be known to come from the northern part of Nigeria that has always received state protection and patronage for religious persecution. In July, 2009, when the security forces in northern Nigeria battled the remnants of an Islamic sect loosely modelled on Afghanistan's Taliban movement, the world did not pay attention. In that particular incident, more than 180 people died. It was a local Nigerian news. Now that a Nigerian likely affiliated with Al Qaeda attacked an American airline, the world's attention will be fixed on Nigeria. To a majority of Nigerians, religious terrorism has a long history. To Christians, particularly those living in the northern part of Nigeria, terrrorism began long before Al Qaeda and 9/11. Northern Nigeria has always provided the breeding ground for intolerant Islamic fanaticism, the kind that gave life to Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab's ill-fated attack on the American soil. Nigerians have for years been killed in large numbers by Islamic fanatics with quiet but active support of the northern elite that have ruled Nigeria for most of her life.” (27-12-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail:
Anybody know why the podcast isn't working?
HAppy: the site podcast is not restored yet: we are working to begin a protocol where individual segments are available asap. No excuses. Just overwhelmed for now. For now, the podcast remains avail at wabcradio.com. Thanks
NO ONE CAN LEAVE HIS OR HER SEAT DURING THE LAST HOUR
Did Hitchcock direct this new horror?
Thank you John. The podcasts aren't available on WABC either, but as long as I know they're coming back soon(ish), I can calm down the trembling that comes from John Batchelor withdrawal. ;-)
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- The Associated Press has learned that a second Nigerian man has been taken into custody aboard a jetliner in Detroit after locking himself in the airliner's bathroom.
A law enforcement official tells the AP that the incident took place aboard the same Northwest flight that was attacked on Christmas Day. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident was ongoing.
A Delta spokeswoman says all 256 passengers have been safely taken off the plane. Delta operates the Northwest flight.
Copyright © 2009 Associated Press
A full body scan will not solve it. Nothing mechanical will solve it. We need to put the fear of God into them. We need to turn it around: have them be more scared of us than we are of them. All these guys can claim instant sainthood should they be successful in any mayhem the can raise abroad. And why shouldn't they try it? Martyrdom is their salvation. And if they should screw up, they know we won't even dare to bloody so much as their lip. Instead, we'll give them first class health care and housing with all the conveniences they never had growing up. Then we'll provide them with a platform from which to spew anti-American propaganda which they know will be applauded by most of the rest of the world and by half of our own people.
It's a win-win for them. They can't lose no matter what happens. If we were to become serious and started treating these guys like the scum they are - making an example of a few of them - this sh*t would stop. If we could just take a time-out for a moment and stop attacking ourselves, put our heads together, and (in Linda's words) become 'men and women of action', all this terrorist and pirate stuff would significantly subside. If we could stop acting like pussies for just a minute, we could save ourselves a lot of money and hassle at the airports and everywhere else. If we could dispense with arrogantly blaming ourselves for every bad thing that happens; wearing a hair shirt to atone for real or imagined crimes, turning ourselves inside out in an attempt to appease or justify evil, we would once again become the respected masters of our fate.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
Not only will passengers have to remain seated during the final hour, they also won't be allowed to have anything in their laps, such as books or magazines. The effect will be rather like high school detention, one supposes.
Here we see a concrete example of how multiculturalism diminishes freedom of action.
This country can allow millions of Muslims into its borders, with all the security rules and surveillance that their problematic presence will entail, or it can have liberty. But America can't have both.
It seems that we have made our decision. Bon voyage.
These new restrictions might be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
I prefer to be able to bring my M1911A1 on flights. Pure fantasy at this point, but if law abiders could protect themselves, it might be better than being a sheeple in a system where the wolf can still get through. I will tell you what though, I will not travel by plane if I can help it. It's ridiculous at this point. Cavity searches will be next, as it is for the common good. Why do good people have to suffer because of a few bad apples? A well armed citizenry is a polite one.
If the purpose of terrorism is to instill fear, then the "unsuccessful" attack was successful. While no lives were lost, thankfully, look at the measures we are being forced to take. Not to mention the cost in dollars. While I understand that we can never be 100% sure that a terrorist won't get thru, I wonder if this one could have, and should have, been stopped before he got on the plane. No one was concerned that he paid cash for his ticket? No one questioned why he was off to Detroit for two weeks without luggage? No one pondered why he would want the very special 19A seat?
As to the second incident today, I have trobule with coincidences. Maybe his food posioning (was anyone else on this long trip sick) was caused by his trying to digest the exposive after he had a change of heart, or maybe it was just an AQ attempt to see our reaction. One report in British press talks of 25 Brits currently in Yemen being trained, and expected back in the West early in 2010, where they will be monitored.
Why do we underestimate the enemy when they go to such pains to repeat themselves over and over again.
Thousands of travelers are going to suffer because those in charge - of airport safety and governments - refuse to think outside the box. The time to stop these guys is BEFORE they get on the plane. Common sense and trained personnel who understand body language and who can effectively profile will do more to stop terror in the sky than most screening machines. And a bunch of trained canines wouldn't hurt either.
Remember, it's illegal to profile.
>Remember, it's illegal to profile.
Indeed. Eight years ago the always indispensable Steve Sailer noted that during the second Bush-Gore Presidential debate, ">*W. spoke out against the practice of profiling Muslim air passengers* with his customary wit and eloquence: "We got to do something about that."
Say, how'd that ever work out, anyhow?
Not in the United States of Linda, Peter! And the funniest picture of the day was front page NY Times, airport dogs sniffing suitcases when they should have been sniffing crotches.
BECAUSE THE GOV'T CAN'T PROTECT US, IT HAS TO ANNOY US.
The gov't has to pretend it can protect us w/these new rules. But it can't.
I'm flying in a few days and am afraid I'm going to turn into a news item. You know, person goes beserk at airport, gets tasered, etc. I just don't have much patience, anymore. My defense will be Grumpy Man's Syndrome. I just hope the window seat I picked out isn't 19 A.
Let's see now if I can follow this: Because we aren't allowed to 'profile', every airline passenger must be viewed as a potential suicide bomber; and air passengers, are therefore expected to sacrifice that uniquely American convenience of being innocent until proven guilty. This approach is already flawed because, clearly, not everyone is a terrorist – please excuse me, I forgot for a moment that we aren’t allowed to use that word anymore. Let’s substitute ‘terrorist’ with the old Cherokee term, ‘one who smells of explosive substances’. Let’s continue…
Since it is impractical to screen every passenger, we must go by the numbers. This means, we screen every tenth (or any number) person. If the tenth person happens to be a four-year old child, or a 97-year old grandmother - or, heaven forbid, a 23-year old Caucasian male - these folks will be pulled from the line for special attention (from now on surely to include a rectal exam by a certified government health professional as well).
By the same token, if the eighth person in line happens to be a guy named Mohammed who’s on the terror list (there goes that banned word again – I guess, the list , by extension cannot be said to exist either), paid for his one-way ticket with cash at the airport, has no luggage or passport, and has wires sticking out of his shoes, we can’t touch him because (1) he’s not the tenth person (and we wouldn’t want to be sued if it turns out that he’s not planning anything). And (2) he’s obviously not white and we wouldn’t want to be seen as being racist. In fact, it’s been quite permissible in the past to bend the rules a bit in this situation, for, even if he happens to be the tenth person, we’re allowed to pretend he’s #11 or 9. As a person of color, he wouldn’t understand the self-imposed hoops we're required to jump through – and we wouldn’t want to offend, after all.
What to do? Profile! Use your brains!! Use your common sense!!! Realize we’re at war with these people!!!! Stop punishing us for what they do!!!!! Damn it!!!!!!
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
A few thoughts here:
(1) To Linda, I've been saying that about the instilling fear part all along. The second we started having any kind of searching/surveillance at the airports over and above what we had pre 9/11, the terrorists won. Plain and simple. The second everyone went home for the day on 9/11 and abandoned their desks and their construction sites and took the day off, the terrorists won.
(2) I'm no expert on dogs, but I do think that there will be limitations on what the dogs can be trained to recognize. There will be X number of chemicals that they'll be trained to sniff out. So, the terrorists will get a hold of that list of X and then make chemical number X+1, which the dogs aren't familiar with. Also, many chemicals don't have a particular odor until they are hit with a catalyst or mixed with part 2 of the bomb. Still easy enough for terrorists 1 and 2 to get on, holding chemicals X+1 and X+2, both odorless, then mix them together once they're on board.
(3) Which means that they'll have to prohibit anyone from ever getting up to use the bathroom. Which means that we'll all have to wear diapers when we go on long plane flights, or be escorted by a flight attendant ... hmmmm.... this might not be as bad as I thought ... but I DIGRESS! .... anyway, that leads to
(4) Which means that nobody will ever want to go on planes anymore.
(5) Here's a real stumper for you all. Why, if it's so easy to go on a Metro train without any sort of screening at all, do terrorists continue to focus on airplanes? You could go onto any crowded Metro train in LA on any given day and wipe out as many people as on a 757 and not have to worry about detection at all. So, why are they wasting their time with planes at all anymore?
(6) Profiling won't work because it will be a trivial matter for them to find a sufficiently WASPish person who won't fit any known profile that will want to make a name for him or her self by taking the plunge.
(7) And finally, the Democrats in Congress are making life in this country so not worth living by passing these awful government takeovers such as the health care bill, that at some point our lives may not even be worth the effort to save. Life has to be worth living in order for one to want to take great measures to avoid death, and I think we're getting very close to the point of no return here in the U.S. Maybe that's the real reason to become socialists - then we won't be worth killing anymore, and we can live in peace.
Mark Steyn remarks that Reid and Pelosi "government health care" will prove to be "all government and no health care." TSA is the exisiting model -- all government and no security. Now passengers can't even have a damn blanket or read a book for a whole hour before their flight lands? Make sure we round up those little bags of pretzels, too -- clearly a threat! And suppose you really do have to go to the bathroom during this time? Tough! And how does the Gulag Hour line up with Obama's just passed and much-ballyhooed "passengers' bill of rights?" Is that now merely the Soviet Constitution with wings?
More importantly, the usual government response to a government screw-up is already on in full regarding the Detroit bombing attempt: cover up and misdirect by limiting information and scattering red-herring issues all over the place. The prime red-herring in this case is -- with respect JB -- funneling discussion into the dead-end of technological gizmos like body scans, puff scans, etc., which can be proposed and studied at length, with the "winners" no doubt to be purchased with more "stimulus" billions. All an excuse -- techno-marvels were not necessary to stop Muttallab. Better processing of the data-mountain already gathered on potential terrorists (a traditional bete noir of US intelligence) and then profiling, profiling, profiling would have resulted in this latest jihadi loon not even getting near the airport much less on the plane. Clearly, the only effective "screening" going on here is to screen the Obama Administration, especially Janet Incompetano, and assorted inside-the-Beltway mandarins from long overdue criticism of their brain-dead and corrupt "national security" policies.
Listening to Obama's (belated) statement on the attempted Christmas bombing was enough to make one wonder whether POTUS is delusional. So Muttallab's "an isolated extremist" who "allegedly" tried to blow up that airliner and 280 innocent people? Good God! Here come another endless and costly show trial, all to give a foreign unlawful combatant (not an American citizen) the constitutional rights to due process that will supposedly make all those seventh-century lovely minds in the Islamic world love us. Thus does The Bamster foolishly invite the Islamists to press their "lawfare" strategy. And the "isolated" Muttallab has already lawyered up so that the Feds can't even get a DNA sample out of him. If this guy is so "isolated," where did these formidable defense lawyers come from and so soon? Meanwhile, Muslim groups here are, as usual, beginning to portray him as a victim by wailing against "profiling," their favorite red-herring issue -- no "isolation" here, either. Then there's Muttallab's Internet adventures, travels to Yemen (and Amsterdam), etc.; not exactly "isolation," either. So is POTUS delusional, or just an out-of-his-depth Chicago left-wing pol who has never been serious about national security issues?
>Profiling won't work because it will be a trivial matter for them to find a sufficiently WASPish person who won't fit any known profile that will want to make a name for him or her self by taking the plunge.
Not long after 9/11, a military man who fancied himself to be knowledgeable about security matters tried to tell me the same thing, and yet virtually all attacks that have taken place in the intervening eight years have been carried out by those who fit the stereotypical profile. So much for the experts.
Eventually Al Queada will no doubt find one or two some blond-haired, blue-eyed converts eager to blow themselves up, although they don't seem to have managed this allegedly trivial undertaking just yet; but unless Europe becomes Islamized sometime in this century, a not inconceivable prospect, WASPish suicide bombers will remain a comparative novelty, much like NBA players.
Or to put it another way, profiling works for El Al, doesn't it? So why not for us?
Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with profiling. Although I don't think it necessarily has to be racial profiling to be effective, but if it does have to be racial profiling, then so be it.
I'm just saying that if you do start profiling, the next step will be to find the WASPish type. Since profiling hasn't been permitted yet, the terrorists haven't had to find the WASPish types yet. Necessity is the mother of invention.
All my statements come with a caveat that I'm thinking 5 steps down the road. Of course people aren't going to immediately abandon air travel. But, I do think that air travel will become obsolete at some point in the not too distant future, at least domestic flights. I think there will always be a limited market for intercontinental flights, but the security on those flights will be so strict that they will be quite a miserable undertaking.
The only alternative scenario would be if Americans would learn to get over their rather cowardly fear of death; I don't see that happening any time soon. So cowards get what they deserve.
Terrorists aren't afraid of dying. We are. Game, set, match to the terrorists every time until we overcome our fear of death. In a sense, we should look at the terrorists as a gift from power to help us overcome a fear we would otherwise have no chance of overcoming.
Kenneth Stevens:
Totally agree that we should adopt an El Al-style profiling model -- which takes in even more variables than a person's looks -- instead of the current "system" which Janet Incompetano originally claimed worked so "perfectly" in respect to the Christmas bombing attempt.
Meant to write "WASPish suicide bombers will remain a comparative novelty, much like *short* NBA players." Without "short" that sentence makes no sense.
>I'm just saying that if you do start profiling, the next step will be to find the WASPish type. Since profiling hasn't been permitted yet, the terrorists haven't had to find the WASPish types yet. Necessity is the mother of invention.
I rather imagine that the pool of available WASPish suicide bombers would be quite small, thereby making the terrorist recruiters' jobs much more difficult. That strikes me as a good thing.
But on this I wholeheartedly agree with you: If the American people were to man up, that would do far more to destroy Al Quaeda than any strategy our masters in Washington could ever devise. After all, as a former waiter at the Café de la Rotonde who went on to a career in politics once observed, "The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize."
But f we ever did somehow remember that the backbone is not a vestigial organ, then the same Federal government that does everything it can to infantilize us would quite correctly perceive that their grip on power would be threatened. That also strikes me as a good thing. Let them be afraid for once.
"If it is an unjust law you would abolish
Remember that the law is written on your own forehead, with your own hand."
Kahlil Gibran
If the American people would just sit in a dark room and contemplate the above quote thoroughly, until they realized the truth of it, 90% of our problems would disappear practically overnight.
>If the American people would just sit in a dark room and contemplate the above quote thoroughly, until they realized the truth of it, 90% of our problems would disappear practically overnight.
Agreed. But as Pascal observes, "All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone. "
Jeez, did Pascal really say that? It seems kind of suspect that Pascal would have anticipated a counterpoint to every single point I might raise on a blog centuries in the future.....
Anyway, no matter, I can match him with Grateful Dead quotes:
"Goin' where the wind don't blow so strange.
Maybe up in some high cold mountain range.
Lost one round but the prize wasn't anything but back in the back,
And more of the same...."
>" Let them be afraid for once."
I quite agree. Let's hand out guns at check-in. We've tried everything else. At this point I have more faith in ordinary people than the so-called authorities. When did it stop being a crime to herd the helpless into ovens?
"Hand out guns at check-in".... you guys have been infected by listening to the socalists so much ... you mean to say "Sell guns at a modest profit at check-in...."
How about we ask El Al how they do such a good job. I am sure they profile, but their record is very good.
El Al personnel rather famously don't look for weapons, but for for terrorists. They make no politically correct pretense of fairness or impartiality.