# The system worked **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 29, 2009, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908 "2009-12-29T15:02:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Sinaijon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Sinaijon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinaijon)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/61 "2009-12-29T17:51:05Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > I already mentioned that I don’t agree will all of what she said, but here is more context: Again, that is from the latter interview where she eats her words. It is a \*completely \*different context. Like I said earlier. She was correct when she admitted she was wrong. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/62 "2009-12-29T18:02:51Z")
> [@Sinaijon](#): > > Again, that is from the latter interview where she eats her words. It is a \*completely \*different context. > > Like I said earlier. She was correct when she admitted she was wrong. Your OP does not make that distinction. Sorry if the actual context does make the reporter and you sound ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Smashy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2bfe46/32.png) [@Mr\_Smashy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Smashy)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/63 "2009-12-29T18:03:31Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Yes, but you said you want air marshals on “any plane that wants the privelege of direct-flying into our airports”. I won’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. Let’s start with what we have. It increases the security profile of America, it makes us safer. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Smashy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2bfe46/32.png) [@Mr\_Smashy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Smashy)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/64 "2009-12-29T18:06:05Z")
sry **El K** , a poll on these boards hardly qualifies as scientific. Nor would one on kos, firedoglake, foxnews, etc. PS this is the pit. Deal. Lord knows I get my share of insults hurled at me from mental giants like **Lobo**. Or are you a hypocrite? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/65 "2009-12-29T18:09:27Z")
Well, how many such air marshalls did you have in mind? Presmably, one for each flight originating in a foreign country bound for the US? Is that the plan? ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/66 "2009-12-29T18:11:02Z")
> [@Mr\_Smashy](#): > > PS this is the pit. Deal. Lord knows I get my share of insults hurled at me from mental giants like **Lobo**. Or are you a hypocrite? Yes, I’m a hypocrite. Everyone already knows this. My sole objection to your (IMO) poorly thought-out plan and pre-emptive insults is purely on partisan grounds. Well, not really. Actually, I’m still trying to understand your point. In what way would the presence of an air marshal on the flight in question have altered the outcome? Seems to me it wouldn’t have changed a thing. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/67 "2009-12-29T18:13:15Z")
> [@Mr\_Smashy](#): > > sry **El K** , a poll on these boards hardly qualifies as scientific. Nor would one on kos, firedoglake, foxnews, etc. > > PS this is the pit. Deal. Lord knows I get my share of insults hurled at me from mental giants like **Lobo**. Or are you a hypocrite? Before insulting I usually give others the benefit of the doubt, as I linked before, CNN reported that the recommended screening by the USA is done in Amsterdam, do you have a cite that this is not the case? You may be proposing something that was already implemented. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Smashy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2bfe46/32.png) [@Mr\_Smashy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Smashy)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/68 "2009-12-29T18:16:19Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#): > > Yes, I’m a hypocrite. Everyone already knows this. My sole objection to your (IMO) poorly thought-out plan iand pre-emptive insults is purely on partisan grounds. > > Well, not really. > > Actually, I’m still trying to understand your point. In what way would the presence of an air marshal on the flight in question have altered the outcome? Seems to me it wouldn’t have changed a thing. I’m no partisan, I’m more of a security-first moderate. And I completely agree with you that the outcome, _in this case_ would have been the same. However I do NOT want to rely upon Dutch tourists as our doctrine for defeating these kinds of attacks in the future. And now let me ask you a question: do you agree that increasing the Air Marshal presence (on American flagged carriers…first…) and enforcing better screening, including backscatter, would make Americans safer? That it’s possible that it might deter some attacks? That it might even catch the next shoe/crotch-bomber before the cocksucker gets on the flight? ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/69 "2009-12-29T18:17:17Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Well, how many such air marshalls did you have in mind? Presmably, one for each flight originating in a foreign country bound for the US? Is that the plan? Look, if what we want is deterrence, how about uniformed military troops on every flight, with automatic weapons? Probably cheaper per hour than air marshals anyway. That would give pause to people threatening to use the toilets in the last hour of flight. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/70 "2009-12-29T18:17:46Z")
> [@](#): > > …before the cocksucker gets on the flight Hey! Some of my best friends are cocksuckers! ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/71 "2009-12-29T18:20:19Z")
Interesting, the hysteria around one failed attempt on one airliner. This interesting site, [The Odds of Airborne Terror](http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/odds-of-airborne-terror.html) rather nicely puts these threats in context: > [@](#): > > The Bureau of Transportation Statistics provides a wealth of statistical information on air traffic. For this exercise, I will look at both domestic flights within the US, and international flights whose origin or destination was within the United States. I will not look at flights that transported cargo and crew only. I will look at flights spanning the decade from October 1999 through September 2009 inclusive (the BTS does not yet have data available for the past couple of months). > > Over the past decade, according to BTS, there have been 99,320,309 commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States. Dividing by six, we get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures. > > These departures flew a collective 69,415,786,000 miles. That means there has been one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 mles flown. This distance is equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune. > > Assuming an average airborne speed of 425 miles per hour, these airplanes were aloft for a total of 163,331,261 hours. Therefore, there has been one terrorist incident per 27,221,877 hours airborne. This can also be expressed as one incident per 1,134,245 days airborne, or one incident per 3,105 years airborne. > > There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning. So based on this horrific, terrifying, _ **un-manning** _ threat (including two total fiascos, clownish bumbling failures), the hysterics want to pull out of international air conventions that have served the Americans for what, 50-60 years? Perhaps better, ban all flights to the US would be better. After all, people who look and talk foreign are on them, and that’s scary. Better America cowers in abject paralysing fear after the horrible threat of two morons who did less damage than a kid with firecrackers could, than show some fucking bloody balls and shrug the idiocy off. And you want to imposing this cowardly idiocy on the rest of the world? Fuck off, ban all flights to your fucking country, whinging cowards. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/72 "2009-12-29T18:23:26Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#): > > In what way would the presence of an air marshal on the flight in question have altered the outcome? Seems to me it wouldn’t have changed a thing. Right. What could he have done that the guy sitting next to him didn’t do? If there’s been a real change in airline safety since 9/11, it is that passengers are now alert enough to the possibility of an onboard act that they’ll jump on a guy like Reid or Abdulmutallab themselves, not just sit there bovinely wondering what’s going on. If the point was that just \*having \*an air marshal on the flight would at least have made people \*feel \*safer (the apparent object for many), that’s false too. Their presence is not made known to anyone but the crew, for obvious reasons, and they aren’t often present onboard anyway. **Sinaijon** , try this: Napolitano was neither right nor wrong on either occasion. Does that hurt your brain much? ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/73 "2009-12-29T18:26:30Z")
> [@Mr\_Smashy](#): > > And now let me ask you a question: do you agree that increasing the Air Marshal presence (on American flagged carriers…first…) and enforcing better screening, including backscatter, would make Americans safer? That it’s possible that it might deter some attacks? That it might even catch the next shoe/crotch-bomber before the cocksucker gets on the flight? I agree (in principle) on screening, disagree on air marshals. Although clearly I am not an expert on the subject, I am unaware of the presence of air marshals ever being of much use. Even re: screening, it appears that all mechanisms were already in place to have prevented the crotch-bomber from getting aboard the flight. I can’t see what, other than mandatory frisking of every passenger, could have made a difference here. In my opinion, finally, re: this incident, I feel a rather large mountain is being made out of what, if not a molehill, is little more than a slight rise in the terrain. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Smashy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2bfe46/32.png) [@Mr\_Smashy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Smashy)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/74 "2009-12-29T18:28:16Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Before insulting I usually give others the benefit of the doubt, as I linked before, CNN reported that the recommended screening by the USA is done in Amsterdam, do you have a cite that this is not the case? You may be proposing something that was already implemented. Fair enough > **[The Honolulu Advertiser - Customer Service](http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20091228/BREAKING/91228006/Homeland-Security-secretary-concedes-airline-screening-system-failed)** > > Honolulu Hawaii News - HonoluluAdvertiser.com is the home page of Honolulu Hawaii with in depth and updated Honolulu local news. Stay informed with both Honolulu Hawaii news as well as headlines and stories from around the world. > [@](#): > > An apparent malfunction in a device designed to detonate the PETN may have been all that saved the 278 passengers and the crew aboard Northwest Flight 253. **No undercover air marshal was on board and passengers and crew subdued the suspect when he tried to set off the explosion.** He succeeded only in starting a fire on himself. [http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/12/howd-that-guy-get-past-schipol.html](http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/12/howd-that-guy-get-past-schipol.html) > [@](#): > > The New York Times is quoting a spokeswoman as saying Schipol has 15 “millimeter wave” machines that do the imaging, but that for some reason – not disclosed – the machines can’t be used on passengers headed for the United States. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/75 "2009-12-29T18:33:45Z")
If this means that the process of airline travel is going to involve somebody with rubber gloves looking down our underwear, then truly the terrorists have won. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Mekhazzio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b38774/32.png) [@Mekhazzio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mekhazzio)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/76 "2009-12-29T18:34:25Z")
I’m still waiting for our War on South American Maintenance Outsourcing and our War on Bird Strikes. Either is a vastly more serious threat to airline passengers than terrorism. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/77 "2009-12-29T18:34:46Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > If this means that the process of airline travel is going to involve somebody with rubber gloves looking down our underwear, then truly the terrorists have won. 😃 Well, them and the fetishists. ---
**Author:** ![Lightnin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightnin/32/180_2.png) [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/78 "2009-12-29T18:36:14Z")
> [@Mr\_Smashy](#): > > And now let me ask you a question: do you agree that increasing the Air Marshal presence (on American flagged carriers…first…) and enforcing better screening, including backscatter, would make Americans safer? That it’s possible that it might deter some attacks? That it might even catch the next shoe/crotch-bomber before the cocksucker gets on the flight? How much are you willing to \*pay \*for this increased security? Let’s see a dollar amount- how much more, in taxes, are you willing to pay to make Americans a little bit safer? I mean, surely no amount of money is too large for safety, right? So let’s see how much you’re willing to spend to have an Air Marshall on \*every \*incoming flight (regardless of the fact that it wouldn’t have done a lick of good in this situation). ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/79 "2009-12-29T18:38:37Z")
> [@Mr\_Smashy](#): > > Let’s start with what we have. It increases the security profile of America, it makes us safer. So does banning personal automobiles. By a much greater margin, in fact. The fact that a proposal may make us safer is not an automatic mandate to carry it out. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908/80 "2009-12-29T18:38:52Z")
> [@Mr\_Smashy](#): > > Fair enough > > [The Honolulu Advertiser - Customer Service](http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20091228/BREAKING/91228006/Homeland-Security-secretary-concedes-airline-screening-system-failed) > > [http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/12/howd-that-guy-get-past-schipol.html](http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/12/howd-that-guy-get-past-schipol.html) From memory and the CNN clip: Your first quote mentions the lack of a marshal but even in the USA not all flights get a marshal. Their schedules are secret for obvious reasons, so we have to get a cite that shows that we never have them in international flights. As for your second quote CNN reported that Amsterdam is working to get the body scans up, but \*\*privacy concerns from the American public \*\*and delays in their development and cost are the most likely reasons why they are not used widely, not because of stubbornness from the Netherlands. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-system-worked/522908.md?page=5)