Where are their initiatives to deal with the threat of explosives posed by liquid binary and those that can be place in cargo?

Gettysburg,

Are you suggesting, then, that no over arching plan is needed and that we can simply rely on the competence of the intelligence services? By this logic then there should be no crime at all because the police have dismantled some fairly sophisticated criminal plots.

Further, you point about this having been foiled with Bush and Blair on vacation is bizarre at best. Politicians aren't supposed to be involved in the day to day aspects of police work - they are supposed to develop long range strategies. As Larry points out, binary explosives have been known about for years and yet, the only strategy in place is to rely on the intelligence services. If they detect 99.9% of all such plots then is that good or bad?

Finally, the argument that there have been no terrorist attacks here since 9/11 (also made on another thread) is a poor argument. It's analogous to leaving your windows open because you didn't get robbed in the past 5 years. Further, have you considered that it is unlikely that the most effective strategy for terrorists is to perform the maximum number of attacks in the shortest amount of time. After all, the terrorists do have actual goals which they are trying to achieve.

So when I fly, (I am an old lady of 72) I can't carry my toothpaste or my shampoo on the plane, but nobody knows what dangerous liquids might be in the cargo on my plane. Is that how it works?

Apparently, yes, that is how it works. Or fails to work, as the case may be.

Feeling safer?

Yes, we apparently will not be allowed to carry on board any liquids of any kind, including bottled water, and I suppose full bladders will be forbidden on board too.  So, the airline industry is once again stuck with trying to sell a service where the buyers of that service are to be treated like crime suspects.  And, we wonder why so many airlines are bankrupt or near bankrupt.

It seems we are seeking 100% certainty that no one will commit an "evil act" on board an airplane.  That, of course, is utterly impossible.  It is a fact that if inspectors of anything always find nothing untoward, they will also not find the rare thing that is there that is being looked for.  Human psychology. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

Larry, you just don't have your priorities right. Working on detection procedures at airports, such that people have secure, rapid passage, is great if you're in the reality-based community. But treating everyone like a criminal serves as a perpetual reminder to all Americans that they should be afraid and that someone strong is in charge doing something (at least to them). It's all theater, and the GOP has the starring role.

Remember when Bush's 2004 election opponent tried to apear strong on terrorism by making port security an issue? Heck, if someone were actually riding on each load of cargo, preferably someone with a beard suitable for photo-ops, then we'd have port security.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

Rest at ease, Hoppy.

Worried about Hijackers? Aerial Terrorists smuggling bombs aboard?  Worry no longer!   Here is. . .

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Not my original idea, of course, so I won't be applying for a patent on it.  In fact, it has had a trial run already, and guess what, mainstream media covered it.  But don't trust them, read the FAQs

Warning. 

Parental Discretion advised on some of the links.

aMike

Yeah, that's how it works sister - and don't try knittin any afghans neither

  D O N' T   E V E R   A S K   T H A T  I N  P U B L I C !  !   !

Unless you don't mind a long vacation in Cuba. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

Hey, I just tried to go to Cuba (just for a day-trip) from the Bahamas 2 weeks ago, and the price was prohibitive. Wish now that I had sucked it up and gone!

Jan Knaus

On reading that IHT article, I kept muttering "Yes, but..." as several of the examples had key details missing. Nitroglycerine is not a seriously practical example; it's so shock sensitive that it would likely detonate from being jostled in security screening, unless it was in an inherently suspicious amount of padding.

In general, there is an assumption that things need to go BOOM to bring down an airplane. There are liquids and solids that could achieve it in other ways.

There's always the chant of "certain electronic devices" might interfere with the navigational systems of the airplane. It is an interesting exercise to consider the design and ease of concealment of electronics that will interfere with the navigation systems of the airplane/

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Finally, the argument that there have been no terrorist attacks here since 9/11 (also made on another thread) is a poor argument. It's analogous to leaving your windows open because you didn't get robbed in the past 5 years.

I've always thought it was like hopping about in your living room to keep the elephants away. See, no elephants--it must be working!

Those pics are a hoot! I have to ask, though (leaving aside the fact that I am a fairly well-preserved and in-shape 58 year-old)
-- who would want to sit in a seat just vacated by someone else's naked butt?

-- do they serve hot beverages on this flight?

-- and finally; if you get a window seat and you have to pass your behind in everyone else's face as you get to the aisle to visit the "head" are there any guarantees?

OK, I am just way too practical-minded. Count me out. I'll pay the regular rate to travel clothed. (And DOUBLE to insure that everyone else covered up!)

Jan Knaus

Nothing wrong with the New Deal programs that wealthy white "entitled" politicians didn't sabotage.

If you have archive access to the Atlantic, The New Republic, the New York Times, or ANY publication with online archives that go back to the 1940s, and take a gander at the ACTUAL news stories from the ACTUAL times.

It might open your eyes a bit.

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Yes. I'm very sure that Bush and Blair were not directly involved in the terrorists operation in any proveable way.

LOL!

Ba-dum-BUMP!!

Thank you, so much! I really needed that.

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Stop it! Stop it!! I can't breathe!

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

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Larry! I'm shocked, just shocked I tell you!

You forgot flag burning!

[sarcasm off]

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Thanks for the reply.

Not sure we've really figured anything out, but maybe its some relief that they are doing something to catch explosives on the way onto airplanes.

Hardly, youngster. You'll need to go back a bit further than the U.S. Civil war to see your reasoning is simply bogus.

 This is not an untried experiment. Lessons of experience are available from States, from industries and from many Nations of the civilized world.

--FDR 

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Ok let me amend:

His proposals were experimental and completely unprecedented in the American system.

I have college textbooks workerbee. They don't lie!!

Neither do liberal college professors who hold FDR on the same plain as Jesus Christ.

Hi CVill Dem, I got tired of certain annoying commenters and stayed away for a while. Hey, sometimes I even agreed with them, but they were just know-it-alls and had an amswer for everything and knew better than everyone. Thanks for the answer.

It's beyond me how anyone can think that taking away baby food and baby formula and old ladies' shampoo and toothpaste is going to make us safer.

Jane, Have you ever tasted baby formula? It is so nasty it would kill me to have to sample it. Luckily my youngest boys are 16! LOL!

Jan Knaus

No, I think it is not coincidence. Issuance of visas have been significantly tightened. But, more importantly, Muslims in this country are more integrated into the society than they are in Europe. James Fallows has a good piece on the decline of al qaeda in this months Atlantic (subs. only on-line I'm afraid.)

The dispersed nature of the new al-Qaeda creates other difficulties for potential terrorists. For one, the recruitment of self-starter cells within the United States is thought to have failed so far. Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands are among the countries alarmed to find Islamic extremists among people whose families have lived in Europe for two or three generations. “The patriotism of the American Muslim community has been grossly underreported,” says Marc Sageman, who has studied the process by which people decide to join or leave terrorist networks. According to Daniel Benjamin, a former official on the National Security Council and coauthor of The Next Attack, Muslims in America “have been our first line of defense.” Even though many have been “unnerved by a law-enforcement approach that might have been inevitable but was still disturbing,” the community has been “pretty much immune to the jihadist virus.”

Something about the Arab and Muslim immigrants who have come to America, or about their absorption here, has made them basically similar to other well-assimilated American ethnic groups—and basically different from the estranged Muslim underclass of much of Europe. Sageman points out that western European countries, taken together, have slightly more than twice as large a Muslim population as does the United States (roughly 6 million in the United States, versus 6 million in France, 3 million in Germany, 2 million in the United Kingdom, more than a million in Italy, and several million elsewhere). But most measures of Muslim disaffection or upheaval in Europe—arrests, riots, violence based on religion—show it to be ten to fifty times worse than here.

I think you are onto something!  The airlines are largely bankrupt, desparate for new revenue sources.  So, now they can sell not only bottled water, but bottled baby formula, nail polish, face cream, deodorant, perfume, ladies purses (either full or empty), and the skies are the limits once again!  So who said that militant Muslims don't have the best interests of our nation at  heart?  This could be so lucrative that Southwest can let us all fly free! 

Hoppy in Sacramento

I believe that you may be making an assumption that these guys actually are motivated to protect something (us) other than their positions of power and access to wealth (ours [what little we have]).

where the Reign mainly falls?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

I suppose you could but your explosive or toxin in a little sealed baggy inside the can of baby food.

Or, you could just 'suitcase' it. One could, if so inclined, conceal a respectable little quantity of plastic explosives or other volatiles in an anal or vaginal cavity.

So, unless you had an X-Ray or other detection machine, a sonogram for example. Or unless you had some reason to be suspicious of a particular person...

Well... boom in the sky!

Or more anal probes than a fleet of gray space aliens.

It strikes me that all terrorists would need to do is consider the methods of drug traffickers and adapt from there.

Oh... except that wouldn't work, because you know... we're winning the war on drugs too.

Uh, are you saying there's no threat from cargo? Why couldn't the two liquids be combined before?

I think he's got it.

I think he's got it!

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