Except, I thought that previously the goal was to sqeeze some concession out of the government, like the release of some imprisoned revolutionary or terrorist? I admit not having not paid much attention to this, but I don’t recall that terrorists used hostages to materially attack the US or anything before. Which would make the goal of “blowing up stuff” a whole new thing for airline hijackings too.
Not sure “hostage” is the right word since they were not used for any purpose other than as a ruse to get into the cockpit. It would be more appropriate to compare them to bombing victims and that is a tactic used prior to 9/11. Not sure what the concession was suppose to be in the earlier events.
I don’t believe I’ve argued otherwise.
All y’all need to quit hijacking this thread.
The guy was not a threat; he was a goof.
I have not argued against the law nailing his butt–quite the contrary. I have simply noted that the rhetoric of fear (or “terror”) that has been applied to him is silly.
I suppose you looked it up. Cool. I was going off the title alone, and your explanation jives with what seems reasonable. In my defense, though, those fellows who detained him probably didn’t look much farther than the title, either.
The circumstances were such that a strong suspicion of evil intent is well justified. There might not have been a serious danger that he could succeed in hijacking a plane, but he could still injure or kill other passengers while attempting to do so. That makes him a threat.
Right. Maybe he planned to grab one person, hold the cutter to that person’s throat, and start making demands. Then what should the crew and passengers do?
It is no big deal. I am sure we all have hollowed out our books for some reason or other. Books with cavities in the shape of weapons must be very common. I have a Websters unabridged with a hollow in the shape of a nuke. I am sure we all do.
It is handy for opening the taped up cartons when you get to the new digs.
Actually, having hollowed out a couple of books myself, the box cutter is probably the tool he used to do that with, and just stuck it in the book when he was done…OR when he was packing up stuff to move, ran across the box cutter, and thought “Oh yes, the book hollowing tool” and stuck it in a logical place to find it again.
No, but carrying a concealed box cutter onto a plane is a huge red flag, and the Islamic texts point toward a likely cause for one’s motives.
I don’t see anybody suggesting, even remotely, that reading about Islam automatically makes somebody scary.
Cite that the Islamic texts point to a likely cause for motives?
You may say it’s just common sense, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Unca Cece and the SDMB it is to be very skeptical of common sense. So unless you have some record of terrorist hijacking that shows the terrorists are more likely to be reading texts comparing Islam and Christianity than they are to be reading The New York Times, I don’t buy it.
And the OP didn’t claim merely that the texts give us some insight into the guy’s motives; he claimed that the guy was scarier than he would have been if he hadn’t been reading about Islam. In other words, reading about Islam makes someone scary. Perhaps not automatically, but at least in some circumstances. I don’t buy it, and anyone who does has a very poor ability to rationally analyze risk.
His religion, if any, is not relevant.
One brings a book onto an airplane to read it.
One brings a box cutter hidden inside a hollowed out book onto an airplane to . . . what?
Lock him up.
In other words, even if it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, and sounds like a duck, I must nevertheless not assume it is a duck until the liberals have gone over the case with a fine-toothed comb, declared that they have found no trace of prejudice against ducks and certified that I am not an anti-duckist or a duckophobe.
My guess is that the guy intended to make the flight, then write an article or blog about how he got through security with a box cutter and a bunch of Islamic texts, to show how clever he was and how inept the TSA was. Maybe he even thought he’d be able to write an expose’ and sell it or something.
Except that he turned out to be stupid, and the TSA was smarter than he is. There are a million ways to get dangerous implements on a plane, but putting them in a hollowed out book isn’t one of them. I guess this idiot didn’t realize that airport scanners can see through paper.
On my last flight, an old lady got pulled out of line and her luggage searched - because a scanner picked up something anomolous in a book. They took the book out and just about tore it apart before deciding nothing dangerous was in it. They’re looking for hollowed out books. The guy was a moron.
It’s probably because I hate America, right?
You seem to be implying that deep down inside I think this guy was a terrorist, but I’m pretending that he isn’t so as not to offend anyone. Do you actually think that’s what is going on here, or are you deliberately making straw men and pretending they’re me.
Do you actually think this guy was really a terrorist? Because it is perfectly obvious to me that while this guy was many things, he was NOT a terrorist. Which means that if you still think he looked, acted, and sounded like a duck, even though he WASN’T a duck, maybe you don’t actually know jack about ducks. And maybe you should stop lecturing me on how naive I was to think this non-duck might not be a duck.
The only purpose for taking control is to create terror. They do not take control of subways or tall buildings contrary to Hollywood depictions.
And the venue for terror is extremely important. Cutting a throat from ear to ear in a back alley is not going to interupt the commerce of the nation or put the populace in fear of their transportation. Slashing a few passengers on a flight is going to get world wide attention.
The terrorists are busy coming up with innovative ways to terrorize planes. I can speculate on two scenarios to explain the event we are discussing.
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A dry run by a low level munchkin to determine if the the plan for getting a box cutter on board ids feasible.
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An actual operation with several unarmed accomplices intended for blocking retaliating passengers while passengers throats are getting slit one by one until such a time when all the perps take their suicide pills and leaves for Paradise.
Hey, did you hear that the NIU shooter took two semesters of Arabic and wrote a paper on HAMAS?
Does that make him scarier?