I was shirtless and two-thirds pantsless in the Key West International Airport* because that stupid ass wand kept beeping. I’m glad I have a sense of humor. I can see how someone would get pissed.
*about 3 weeks after 9/11. My connecting flight was in La Guardia and things went so fast there, it was almost surreal. The longest connection at that time was in…anyone wanna guess?..Pittsburgh…yes…Pittsburgh…thanks for playing.
Double amen.
I have this fantasy of going back in time and seeing the president declare on September 12:
“We’ve been hit, and it was a tragedy. We’re going to take common sense actions to prevent it happening again, such as securing cockpit doors on airliners. But we will NOT turn our lives and country upside down out of fear. That would play into the hands of those who hope to frighten us into behaving foolishly, and we won’t give them the satisfaction.”
The name’s El_Kabong; pleased to meet you. And a rolleyes! Guess you won that argument for sure.
I don’t know you from a bar of soap, Siam Sam, but I care very much whether you live or die. If you wish to interpret my considered opinion that a reduction in security may at best increase your chance of dying in terrorist hijacking from, say, 0.0000000001 to 0.000000003, as not caring if you live or die, well go right ahead. I promise I’ll never look to you for any input calling for the use of logic.
As far as your accusation of “whining”: guilty as charged. I don’t like people touching me; never have, but I have a job that requires relatively frequent air travel and I get pawed by security types the majority of times that I fly. I don’t have any possibility of finding another job at a similar salary that would avoid this intrusion, so I put up with it. But since I’m guilty of nothing, and I therefore do not actually need to be pawed by security types, I’m allowed to object to it, aren’t I? Right? Right?
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I suspect that you and others who hold the same extreme opinion about Israel have never been there or anywhere else in the Middle East. But I’m sure that qualifies one for knowing everything about the situation. The Muslims would love to take down an El Al airliner, but they’ve never been given the chance. Good for El Al, I say!
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
They haven’t hit us since 9-11 is because they have no reason to; it would be counterproductive for them.
[QUOTE]
I find it incredible that someone could actually believe that.
Object away, and I’m allowed to find your whining pathetic beyond all reason, aren’t I? Right? Right?
Correction since it’s too late to edit: That should have read “terrorists” instead of “Muslims” above. We personally know some fine Muslims who would never want to take down anyone’s airliner, so that should have read “terrorists.”
But it WAS Muslim terrorists, not Irish Catholic or Hindu terrorists, that caused 9/11, so I think passenger profiling a sensible measure for the foreseeable future.
And I think we shouldn’t let American white males rent U-haul trucks anymore. Or was it Ryder?
Hell, I say lets ban U-hauls altogether. You know how much fertilizer you can cram in one of those?
Suit yourself. You’re welcome to disagree with me. I’m quite pleased to see stringent airport security myself and don’t wish to see it go away. I think they’re doing the ebst they can under a stressful situation, and I’ve paid much heed to armchair quarterbacks.
What’s incredible about it ? They would gain nothing by attacking America; if they want to kill Americans, they can do so in Iraq, and more easily. If they attack us here, they’ll just make us look more sympathetic, which is against their interests. Unlike us, they are smart enough to recognize that we are in a war of psychology and propaganda, not guns and missles.
Besides, why go to the risk and effort when they can just sit back in a room somewhere and watch us ruin ourselves ?
The difference in El Al’s security procedures and what we’re talking about is that the El Al procedures actually make sense and actually work.
Let’s take, for instance, that bad-ass liquid. The bad guys can still get it onto the plane, as long as they put it in a small container and put the container into a plastic ziplog baggie for TSA’s inspection.
I know this because I just flew out of Denver. I don’t take a carry-on but I do take a purse since today’s fashion designers have thoughtfully provided me with no place to stow so much as a business card in my clothing. I don’t really think of my purse as a carry-on but I do stuff a lot of things into it in preparation for being away from the comforts of home for any length of time (kleenex, water, paperback novel…). So something shows up in my purse on the flight out. Turns out to be a small bottle of hand creme I forgot was in there, but I want to keep it, so I am instructed to go back out of security, put this bottle into a plastic ziplock bag (they are provided), and then it’s okay. Okay! We are all safe from the killer hand creme!
What the fuck does the plastic bag do, anyway? Of course you can also have a drinkable liquid if it’s 3 oz or less, and stowed in a see-through plastic ziplock bag.
Hey, either this hand creme is a threat or it isn’t. I really don’t see what the plastic bag does. And oddly enough, I already had my fountain pen in such a bag–not because of security but because fountain pens have been known to leak on airplanes. So I used the same baggie and did it all under the watchful gaze of the TSA guy, and why I had to be escorted out of the secure area and then go back through it, now with my dangerous items stowed in a CHEAP PLASTIC BAGGIE, I have no idea. No rational person could see this making any difference at all.
The kicker is that on the way back–when I had stuff in the baggie but they didn’t check it–I accidentally spilled a great deal more than 3 oz of Starbucks coffee into this purse while putting on my seat belt. (Also some on my pants, but mostly it went into the purse.) So when I got home I dumped out the contents of my purse in the hopes of being able to get the coffee smell/stain out, and not only did I find a cigarette lighter that I didn’t know was in there, I found a small aerosol can of Ozium, which I spent hours looking for a few weeks ago. This was all tucked into the bottom of my purse and I would have happily ditched the Ozium AND the lighter–although I don’t consider a cigarette lighter to be a threat I wouldn’t have brought it.
So…while I’d rather not go through the x-ray machine or have my purse emptied (or partially emptied) or take my shoes off, I can live with that. This plastic bag thing, though, is just fucking insane, not to mention useless.
And this bugs me. TSA has idiots looking zealously for who-knows-what threatening items, but they miss the real threats. Put the money into figuring out where the terrorists will strike next and stopping them; actually it looks to me like they have, in fact, won.
Oh lordy. Was the Koolaid tasty? :rolleyes:
They didn’t attack for eight years between WTC 1 and WTC 2. Why? Because they take the time to plan - carefully - what they’re going to do. And, BTW, you’re not ‘taking the fight to them’ because ‘them’ was Osama and his boys and they’re still all nestled nice and cuddly in their homes while GeoBushie is beating the snot out of Iraq, which was not involved.
Sure, although you are of course wrong 
.
Tell me, in your opinion, how many hijackings did the El Al screeners’ questioning of your wife prevent?
I always kinda liked this piece written by a WW2 combat [Opinion & Reviews - Wall Street Journal. Excerpts
When I go to an airport these days I don’t worry about a terrorist bomb. I’ve been flying steadily and unsteadily for 60 years, beginning with my days as a bomber pilot in World War II. I’ve always known that a bomb in somebody’s suitcase could blow up the plane I was on, just as I knew every day in 1943-45 could be my last. No one can ever take all the risk out of flying. On the wrong day you can even be hit by a drunken driver going to or from the airport.
[snip]But most of all I worry about missing the deadline for being checked in, rechecked and checked again before finally reaching my assigned seat flustered, humiliated and exhausted.
[snip]But deep inside I’ll never yield to the airport terrorism that President Bush has imposed on us as his answer to Osama bin Laden. I’m willing to shoot bin Laden. I’d even volunteer to fly a bomber against him if we had any idea of what country he is in. But I’m not willing to let fear of Osama bin Laden weaken our civil rights and convert our airports into police-state nightmares.
George McGovern
Thank Gawd another voice of reason speaks. The terrists, be they furriners or our own gummint want us to live in fear. “If they live in fear, George, we got 'em by the balls…”
I refuse to live in fear, whether it’s instilled from my gummint or some furrin foole. Security measures give us a feeling of safety…and keep us in fear…fear that I will not succumb to. The way I figger, whether I leave this mortal life from a car wreck, smoking too much, by gun or by a bomb strapped on a terrist…when it’s my time, it’s my time…and there ain’t a whole hell of a lot I can do about it.
(My son’s a pilot btw…he says TSA stands for Thousands Standing Around. )
The terrorists were right in 911. They were right in 1993 when they set off a bomb in WTC. They blew up military bases and have had some success. To state that they only have to be right once is total BS. It would be impossible to guess how often they would have to be right to actually change the US.
We can not watch everything. We should watch nuke plants and other power plants. We should prevent the biggies and randomly watch the others. Like drug testing athletes. The threat of being caught must exist. But really ,we can not be completely safe as long as we piss off and exploit so many other peoples.
When exiting the most secure Airlines homeland I was pulled from the queue searched and questioned for about half an hour ,the complete opposite of my entry to the country
Could have been yet more people expressing their opinion of my typing I suppose.
I saw Israeli intelligence agents attempting to blend in with backpackers in old ,east Jerusalem and was amazed at how inept they were ,at the time I thought they must have been decoys to distract attention away from the real agents but have since come to the conclusion that they were trainees on an exercise.(Brit spelling)
Just a couple of points in order to fight ignorance and all.
This might have been the case in Canada, but it was certainly never the case in the US. MrSin used to routinely carry a pig-sticker pocket knife with a 4 inch blade in his carry-on bag. It was often noticed by security pre 9/11, taken out, opened up and then replaced in his bag. It is so much a habit of his to carry this knife that last month he forgot it was in his bag and discovered it while unpacking after a cross-country flight. Oops.
You can carry water on planes (at least in the US, but again maybe not in Oz), you just have to buy it after you go thru security. But then you’re just increasing the profits of the airport shops, so I guess it’s a toss-up. I was always surprised when I was allowed to carry on a 4 pack of unopened glass Perrier bottles before this latest liquid crack-down. It occured to me that I could easily put something nefarious in them if I wanted to. Right after 9/11 I recall that if you brought drinks thru security you were required to take a gulp after going thru the metal detector, but that procedure ended rather quickly.
The shoes thing seems kind of silly, and again at least in the US it seems to change from month to month and airport to airport. Also, until the most recent dust-up and the increased security MrSin was never forced to take his shoes off. He was always allowed to go thru and then have his feet wanded. The silliest shoe thing I ever saw was when security was randomly selecting people for the shoe inspection. The person selected for shoe inspection was a 13 year old girl wearing a pair of obviousely old flip-flops at OGG. I have no idea what kind of a bomb could have been hidden there.
Finally since I’m rambling on, I’ve got to say I like the TSA waaaaaaay more than the rent-a-cops the airlines used to hire. I have always been treated with utmost respect by the TSA, not so much by the old r-a-c’s. And for some reason I seem to get selected for the full take everything out of the bag and the arms out wanding on a semi-regular basis. I’ve even had the Ohh noooos!!! boob check. All of the TSA folks behaved in a totally professional manner.
Don’t tell the natives, but someone sufficiently sophisticated and modivated could easily bypass any plausible security measures that may be erected. Forbidding knives is low-hanging fruit, and including nail files and corkscrews in the description eliminates room for interpretation. But if the cabin doors had been secured prior to the September 11 attacks–an obvious and easy precaution that should have been part of basic flight procedures–then those attacks would have never occurred. The sort of petty harassment that has become part of post-September 11 flight culture exists primarily to remind people that the authorities are doing “something” to stop those terrorists. Whether you apply a “security theater” or conspiratory rationale to it doesn’t really matter; these methods are ineffective at stopping actual terrorism.
I wish I could say the same. TSA might be an improvement over the old batch of goons–I didn’t fly all that frequently prior to 2001–but I’ve gotten less than “utmost respect” from TSA personnel on various occasions. Mind you, I understand it to some extent; it’s a boring, repetative, and mostly thankless job in which you are forced to cope with irate and anxious passengers, and you’re looking for a threat you hope you don’t find, with the impetus to generate false positives just to justify having a job. But some of the people they have hired are less than professional in appearance and attitude.
Stranger
Update:
On 2/08/07 I flew on Southwest from…
Jackson, MS to Houston Hobby to Ft. Lauderdale.
Even though I’d emptied out my bag the night before and only packed my laptop and charger I somehow had a full-sized Phillips Screwdriver in my laptop bag.
This time I didn’t even get stopped by security for a second look. Instead, just straight through the X-ray.
-Joe