Underwear Bomber

[hblask 1]

I can't believe there's no thread for this yet. So here are some random observations:1. Anyone who tries to blame this on Obama is an idiot. The R's are starting to make hints in that direction. It appears the R's are trying to waste their opportunity to coast back into power by saying stupid things. The Al Qeda problem goes back to when the US helped train them how to fight superpowers -- under Reagan. And it didn't help that W Bush attacked the wrong country, creating even more enemies and making AQ recruitment easier. 2. How is this a failure of US security? The guy got on in a foreign country. Are we supposed to have TSA agents strip-searching people when the plane crosses the US border? We have to face it: our security is subject to the weakest security at any airport that flies into the US. Making us take off our shoes or wear our underwear on the outside of our clothes won't help that.3. As usual, the TSA/homeland security response is ridiculous. Let's see, a guy on a terrorist watch list gets on a plane wearing explosives on his body. So what do we do? Prevent everyone from holding things on their lap during the last hour of a flight? WTF? It's as if they admit they can't solve the real problem, so they just make some stupid symbolic moves related to random specifics of this case. "One of the passengers saw the terrorist blow his nose with a blue Kleenex about 17 minutes before the attack, so no airline passengers may use blue Kleenex during the second half of a flight." 4. I thought I had a #4, but can't think of it.

[bdc30 0]

I think this will really hurt the air travel industry as a whole. There are reports of delays >6hours at the Toronto airport for flights departing to US airports. A pile of the flights have ended up just being cancelled altogether.If faced with having to travel to NYC, Chicago or basically anywhere on the east coast, I'd rather just drive there than have to sit in the airport all day for a flight that may or may not ever get off the ground. Agree that it's a complete overreaction to subject all passengers to the extra scrutiny and restrictions on carryons. Also, not letting people out of their seats or allowing access to carryon items for the last hour is stupid. All that tells potential terrorists is that they have to time their attack earlier. How do either of those impact passenger safety?

[strategy 4]

.

[SAM_Hard8 50]

I can't believe there's no thread for this yet. So here are some random observations:1. Anyone who tries to blame this on Obama is an idiot. The R's are starting to make hints in that direction. It appears the R's are trying to waste their opportunity to coast back into power by saying stupid things. The Al Qeda problem goes back to when the US helped train them how to fight superpowers -- under Reagan. And it didn't help that W Bush attacked the wrong country, creating even more enemies and making AQ recruitment easier. 2. How is this a failure of US security? The guy got on in a foreign country. Are we supposed to have TSA agents strip-searching people when the plane crosses the US border? We have to face it: our security is subject to the weakest security at any airport that flies into the US. Making us take off our shoes or wear our underwear on the outside of our clothes won't help that.3. As usual, the TSA/homeland security response is ridiculous. Let's see, a guy on a terrorist watch list gets on a plane wearing explosives on his body. So what do we do? Prevent everyone from holding things on their lap during the last hour of a flight? WTF? It's as if they admit they can't solve the real problem, so they just make some stupid symbolic moves related to random specifics of this case. "One of the passengers saw the terrorist blow his nose with a blue Kleenex about 17 minutes before the attack, so no airline passengers may use blue Kleenex during the second half of a flight." 4. I thought I had a #4, but can't think of it.

Seriously? The administrations job is to run the TSA and Homeland Security. This was an epic fail by both. I'm not saying that it is Obama's fault (not yet anyway) directly but the buck has to stop on his desk. Oh and lets continue to blame everything on Bush and Regan. After all they started AQ right?

[bdc30 0]

Seriously? The administrations job is to run the TSA and Homeland Security. This was an epic fail by both.

In what sense though? In that they had potential information about this person well in advance of the incident yet only had him on a watchlist and not the "no fly" list. I won't disagree with you there -- but this was a much bigger failure on the part of the screeners at whatever airport he originally cleared through. The USA can make their system as tight as they want and it still is only as good as it's weakest point.

[FCP Bob 1,312]

No security system can possibly be perfect and the reality is that planes are going to be attacked and blown up. Trying to come up with a perfect system means that the Terrorists have won. They win when Western Societies over react and do stupid things like is happening here.Our societies make cost/benefit decisions when it comes to our personal safety every day. We aren't driving wearing crash helmets when we face far more danger of dying in a car crash because it would be stupid and the things that they're doing here and the cost to our society are even more stupid.Terrorism is about 576 on the list of things that threaten your personal safety and acting like it's the most important thing means that it works as a great weapon not because of the damage it causes or the lives it takes but because of the fear it instills that causes us to change our way of life and how it affects our economy.

[85suited 0]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/200...tem_worked.htmlDHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said that the thwarting of the attempt to blow up the Amsterdam-Detroit flight this week demonstrated that "the system worked."She is backtracking now - but what a moron

[vbnautilus 48]

I can't believe there's no thread for this yet. So here are some random observations:1. Anyone who tries to blame this on Obama is an idiot. The R's are starting to make hints in that direction. It appears the R's are trying to waste their opportunity to coast back into power by saying stupid things. The Al Qeda problem goes back to when the US helped train them how to fight superpowers -- under Reagan. And it didn't help that W Bush attacked the wrong country, creating even more enemies and making AQ recruitment easier. 2. How is this a failure of US security? The guy got on in a foreign country. Are we supposed to have TSA agents strip-searching people when the plane crosses the US border? We have to face it: our security is subject to the weakest security at any airport that flies into the US. Making us take off our shoes or wear our underwear on the outside of our clothes won't help that.3. As usual, the TSA/homeland security response is ridiculous. Let's see, a guy on a terrorist watch list gets on a plane wearing explosives on his body. So what do we do? Prevent everyone from holding things on their lap during the last hour of a flight? WTF? It's as if they admit they can't solve the real problem, so they just make some stupid symbolic moves related to random specifics of this case. "One of the passengers saw the terrorist blow his nose with a blue Kleenex about 17 minutes before the attack, so no airline passengers may use blue Kleenex during the second half of a flight." 4. I thought I had a #4, but can't think of it.

Agree on all points, especially #4.

Seriously? The administrations job is to run the TSA and Homeland Security. This was an epic fail by both. I'm not saying that it is Obama's fault (not yet anyway) directly but the buck has to stop on his desk.

Well, no. As H pointed out, this was a plane departing from a foreign country. Second, how could this possibly be classified as an "epic" fail? This was a totally ridiculous attempt at terrorism by an incompetent man using a technique that doesn't work which completely failed. Obviously whatever checks were made on this guy correctly concluded that he was not capable of doing any harm. Whatever security measures we have forced him to try creating explosives on the plane in the lavatory, which is effectively impossible to do, hence his failure. No one got seriously hurt except the perpetrator. This is not an "epic failure" by TSA at all. It is rather a success of the system and should be a non-story. The fact is that this sort of terrorism is very very difficult to pull of successfully at this point mostly because of the fact that passengers no longer see themselves as hostages and are willing to do anything to take down the terrorists.The system actually fails if we respond with further paranoia and more restrictions on our personal freedoms and travels due to nonsense like this.

[vbnautilus 48]

She is backtracking now - but what a moron

She's only a moron because it's bad PR to say that. She is however 100% correct.

[nutzbuster 7]

No security system can possibly be perfect and the reality is that planes are going to be attacked and blown up. Trying to come up with a perfect system means that the Terrorists have won. They win when Western Societies over react and do stupid things like is happening here.Our societies make cost/benefit decisions when it comes to our personal safety every day. We aren't driving wearing crash helmets when we face far more danger of dying in a car crash because it would be stupid and the things that they're doing here and the cost to our society are even more stupid.Terrorism is about 576 on the list of things that threaten your personal safety and acting like it's the most important thing means that it works as a great weapon not because of the damage it causes or the lives it takes but because of the fear it instills that causes us to change our way of life and how it affects our economy.

Yup. (am I agreeing with Bob???) A guy was talking on Rush just now at how during the end of the IRA conflict actual bombings were no longer needed. All they had to do was make a call merely hinting of a bomb and the entire British transportation system would grind to a halt and millions of pounds in the economy would be lost. Very effective.He was also talking about how absolutely retarded it is to address this latest incident by having folks sit on thier hands like school children during the last hour of a flight, as if WE are now the perps. The difference in the above IRA example is that they were eventually able to talk their way to peace, something that is not an option with religiious terrorists. They want us all dead, period. And until that happens they will likely never stop. Pretty depressing...

[Avaron 0]

I can't believe there's no thread for this yet. So here are some random observations:1. Anyone who tries to blame this on Obama is an idiot. The R's are starting to make hints in that direction. It appears the R's are trying to waste their opportunity to coast back into power by saying stupid things. The Al Qeda problem goes back to when the US helped train them how to fight superpowers -- under Reagan. And it didn't help that W Bush attacked the wrong country, creating even more enemies and making AQ recruitment easier. 2. How is this a failure of US security? The guy got on in a foreign country. Are we supposed to have TSA agents strip-searching people when the plane crosses the US border? We have to face it: our security is subject to the weakest security at any airport that flies into the US. Making us take off our shoes or wear our underwear on the outside of our clothes won't help that.3. As usual, the TSA/homeland security response is ridiculous. Let's see, a guy on a terrorist watch list gets on a plane wearing explosives on his body. So what do we do? Prevent everyone from holding things on their lap during the last hour of a flight? WTF? It's as if they admit they can't solve the real problem, so they just make some stupid symbolic moves related to random specifics of this case. "One of the passengers saw the terrorist blow his nose with a blue Kleenex about 17 minutes before the attack, so no airline passengers may use blue Kleenex during the second half of a flight." 4. I thought I had a #4, but can't think of it.

this.

No security system can possibly be perfect and the reality is that planes are going to be attacked and blown up. Trying to come up with a perfect system means that the Terrorists have won. They win when Western Societies over react and do stupid things like is happening here.Our societies make cost/benefit decisions when it comes to our personal safety every day. We aren't driving wearing crash helmets when we face far more danger of dying in a car crash because it would be stupid and the things that they're doing here and the cost to our society are even more stupid.Terrorism is about 576 on the list of things that threaten your personal safety and acting like it's the most important thing means that it works as a great weapon not because of the damage it causes or the lives it takes but because of the fear it instills that causes us to change our way of life and how it affects our economy.

and so this!

[Pot Odds RAC 23]

Going thru Security for a recent flight, the TSA confiscated a Pocket Knife off of my key ring. It was given to me by my Father-in-Law. The thing was about an inch long and a quarter of an inch wide. The keys on the key ring were far more lethal than the knife. On another trip I had a large tube of toothpaste. It originally held like 9 ounces of tothpaste, but was only about 1/4 full. They confiscated that too because of the ban on containers of liquid over whatever random limit they have set. Is toothpaste even a liquid?

[85suited 0]

She's only a moron because it's bad PR to say that. She is however 100% correct.

No doubt, even if they had to scrape 300 bodies off the tarmac at Detroit, it would have worked just as well.

[SCYUKON 0]

I think this will really hurt the air travel industry as a whole. There are reports of delays >6hours at the Toronto airport for flights departing to US airports. A pile of the flights have ended up just being cancelled altogether.If faced with having to travel to NYC, Chicago or basically anywhere on the east coast, I'd rather just drive there than have to sit in the airport all day for a flight that may or may not ever get off the ground. Agree that it's a complete overreaction to subject all passengers to the extra scrutiny and restrictions on carryons. Also, not letting people out of their seats or allowing access to carryon items for the last hour is stupid. All that tells potential terrorists is that they have to time their attack earlier. How do either of those impact passenger safety?

Was just starting to look at flights to AZ for spring break. I think I will put that thought on hold for a while until see if the hysteria dies down or heats up even more. So totally agree that air industry as a whole will feel the pain of this.Also agree with Bob that the hysteria is misplaced.

[vbnautilus 48]

No doubt, even if they had to scrape 300 bodies off the tarmac at Detroit, it would have worked just as well.

But that is not what happened, right? And there are important reasons partly having to do with the system in place that this did not happen.

[85suited 0]

But that is not what happened, right? And there are important reasons partly having to do with the system in place that this did not happen.

so the system is to have citizen's jump on suspected terror subject?You can say alot of things about this incident - but the "system" most definately did not work. Only a failed detonator seperated us from disaster

[strategy 4]

.

[bdc30 0]

The most ironic fact of all of this crap is that even if he had been successful and blown up the plane, it would have come down in Canada anyway, approx 20mins from where I live.Source

[strategy 4]

.

[vbnautilus 48]

so the system is to have citizen's jump on suspected terror subject?You can say alot of things about this incident - but the "system" most definately did not work. Only a failed detonator seperated us from disaster

Well, yes, that is the best method. But the system prevented him from bringing functioning explosives on to the plane. That is what it is designed to do. Every terrorist is "only a failed detonator" from achieving disaster. We succeed when we prevent them from having a working explosive. If we think we have succeeded only when there are no more attempts at terrorism, then we can never succeed. But really, he was not just a failed detonator away from disaster. From what I have read, with the method he was using it is virtually impossible to create a functioning explosive mid-flight.

[SAM_Hard8 50]

Agree on all points, especially #4. Well, no. As H pointed out, this was a plane departing from a foreign country. Second, how could this possibly be classified as an "epic" fail? This was a totally ridiculous attempt at terrorism by an incompetent man using a technique that doesn't work which completely failed. Obviously whatever checks were made on this guy correctly concluded that he was not capable of doing any harm. Whatever security measures we have forced him to try creating explosives on the plane in the lavatory, which is effectively impossible to do, hence his failure. No one got seriously hurt except the perpetrator. This is not an "epic failure" by TSA at all. It is rather a success of the system and should be a non-story. The fact is that this sort of terrorism is very very difficult to pull of successfully at this point mostly because of the fact that passengers no longer see themselves as hostages and are willing to do anything to take down the terrorists.The system actually fails if we respond with further paranoia and more restrictions on our personal freedoms and travels due to nonsense like this.

Are you serious, "success" a "non-story." Step away from the coolaid man. Guy got on a plane with a bomb. That's epic fail, period. Only reason there isn't a bunch of dead people is just pure luck.I'm, not saying it's Obama's fault, I'm just saying that saying he is totally not to blame is ridiculous. We don't yet know where the exact failure points are and untill we do we don't know who should be held responsible.

[Balloon guy 158]

Give me $500,000 and a telephone and I can join Net jets, charter a G-5, arrive at an obscure airport with 4 guys all carrying duffel bags, and never once see anyone remotely connected to security. We will carry our own luggage onto the plane, and have a fully fueled G-5 within 10 minutes of every major city in America.I will have 2 pilots and a stewardess between flying to my destination, and flying into a crowded office building, cruise ship, sporting venue etc.But no, let's make sure that Susie takes off her Hello Kitty backpack and pink flip flops before she boards a domestic flight on a puddle jumper from Salt Lake City to Heber.

[Pot Odds RAC 23]

...another time my family was flying thru St Louis. We had to walk about a mile to get to our connecting flight. When we got to the gate, we were about an hour early for the departure. I'd noticed a Starbucks back near the original gate. My Step Mother and I are coffee junkies so I went back to get us each a Latte. When I got there they had a little sign that said: "No Espresso Drinks Available"I asked if there was another Starbucks in the Airport. There was, but it was outside of Security. I'd noticed that there was no line at Security - so I decided to exit the secure area and get some caffeine. I purchased our favorite legal drug and headed back to Security. There was literally no line. They had the standard rope snake that zigzags back & forth to manage the crowds. Since there was nobody in line, I ducked under the ropes straight to the end point. The TSA Agent standing there looked at me and said: "You can't do that. You're supposed to zigzag through." She even made the little universal "zigzag motion" with her finger. I smiled and said: "OK. Sorry about that, I just figured that since there was nobody in line..." And I handed her my Boarding Pass and ID. She said: "No. I mean you need to go back and try again." I looked back at the empty zigzag and then at the Agent. “You want me to go back and zigzag through the rope line and come back here?”“Yes.”"No ma’am. I'm not going to do that." We did a little stare down and she eventually took my pass and ID. After her careful check ensuring that my name on the ID actually matched the name on the Boarding Pass (I felt immediately safer because everyone knows that Terrorists don’t have ID), she handed both back to me. Seeing three active, fully manned, x-ray machines each with a bright green "Ready" light and not a single traveler at any of them, I took a step towards the nearest station."STOP!" I was actually startled by how loudly the TSA Agent shouted at me. I half expected that I was about to touch a live electrical wire or something equally dangerous.Nearly spilling my precious hot liquid drugs I turned to her and said: "What?"She said: "I didn't tell you which X-ray station to approach. You don't get in a line without me telling you which Station to approach."I looked at her and very calmly said: "Ma’am. Can you please quit ****ing with me and let me get to my plane?"In retrospect I am sort of surprised she didn't decide to teach me more of a lesson - in a way I'd have deserved it - but she merely pointed at a "line" and I was on my way.By the time I made it back to the gate, the flight was nearly completely through the boarding process. We got on board and found our seats. About ten seconds after sitting down, the Stewardess (excuse me, Flight Attendant) waddled past and hit my elbow with her fat ass, knocking my still hot Latte into my lap before I’d ever had a chance to take a single sip.

[JoeyJoJo 18]

Maybe the real policy is to make it so annoying to fly that terrorists just won't want to deal with it.

[vbnautilus 48]

Are you serious, "success" a "non-story."

Dead serious, yes.

Step away from the coolaid man.

Could this be any more overused? It is not an effective response to the points I have raised. It's also clearly false that I am drinking some TSA-issued coolaid as I have criticized their response to this event in this very thread.

Guy got on a plane with a bomb.

False.

Only reason there isn't a bunch of dead people is just pure luck.

Also false. The reason people aren't dead is because this guy was prevented from getting on a plane with a bomb, and instead had to concoct some ineffectual alternative attempt at creating havoc.