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.

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?

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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?

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.

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.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/200...tem_worked.html

DHS 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

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.

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

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...

this.


and so this!

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?

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

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.

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

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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

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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.

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.

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.

...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.

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

Dead serious, yes.



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.



False.



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.

If Luck is the major part of our Security Plan, then the Plan worked perfectly.

The notion that any person or department or group of people can EVER have enough manpower to know the activity of every single person in the world and prevent every one of them from doing anything bad..... well, it's just silly.

The best we can do is 1. stop pissing everyone off so that they want to bomb us, and 2. stop drowning our intelligence agencies in useless information acquired through the PATRIOT Act and other unconstitutional programs.

And if you think I'm someone who wants to blame everything on Bush and Reagan, you haven't read much of what I've written. I've been brutal to Obama, for the most part. But facts is facts: Reagan trained Al Qeda, taking them from irrelevant to an important terrorist organization. And all the presidents since then have done things to make them hate us more, especially GWB. I don't really think that's partisan, just reality. But to make you feel better, I agree that Clinton made mistakes dealing with them, too, mainly by not taking out bin Laden when he had the chance. But before 9/11 that probably wouldn't have been politically feasible, even if all the intelligence agencies said it was necessary.

Yeah, how did Obama and his administration not personally go to Amsterdam and prevent this?

He is TOTALLY NOT TO BLAME PERIOD. Also, VB is smarter than all of us and he says that getting this explosive to detonate was next to impossible. Lets not ignore that. Let's also not ignore that 500,000 people are on the terror watch list. Putting them all on the no fly list is simply not feasible. Anyone with a name roughly similar to any of those 500,000 people would have to go through intrusive additional screening. It would be chaos.

It's not a success, per se. It's not a failure either. It just is. Calling this pure luck is the definition of kool-aid drinking. So is trying to score cheap political points off a half-brained terror attempt.

Also, BG's point is the best one here. there is no foolproof system. But if this is the best Al-Qaeda can do then we are doing pretty good.....and that is due to contribution from both political parties.

this is a pretty odd opinion since you've stated multiple times that 9-11 was at least somewhat bush's fault.

putting .01% of the worlds population on the no fly list is not feasable?

because a lot of reports since 9-11 stated that they had intel about an upcoming terror attack involving the hijacking of planes. also, I dont think you can compare one 23 year old Nigerian's lame (and according to VB virtually impossible) terror attack to a massive, coordinated hijacking with the intent to destroy numerous important American buildings. Not to mention 9-11 worked and this did not. Results-oriented thinking I suppose but with terrorist attacks that stuff is pretty important.....and I bring up 9-11 against Bush mostly because of his and Cheney's insistence that they did a "great" job with national security (a claim I obviously think is total crap).

if it comes out that the administration knew more about this possible attack than 'his father told the American embassy that he was into radical Islam', I will change my mind. At this point, I dont think you can put blame on anyone except the security at the Netherlands Airport.

not according to Homeland security under both a Republican and Democratic administration. When both sides agree on something, it is usually a good point.

Also, many Muslim men have very similar names. They have to stop and do additional screening not just of the men on the no-fly list but of anyone whose name is similar (which will encompass a LOT of people). The extra security needed to do this would be prohibitively expensive and would cause incredible delays, particularly on international flights.

We are just going to have to accept that life, and flying, comes with some risk.

Democract or Republican administration, I am not buying that with today's technology, you can't match every airline's passenger list against a 500,000 person terror watch list.

At most what could there be 2 additional searches per flight?

Anyone here a statistician?


Realistically, shouldnt the TSA agents be scanning your boarding card anyway... YOu could sort that out at the front of the airport.


There should also be a system of getting like sounding names off a list of you are not a terrorist

I am sure this is way to pie in the sky thinking

This is totally effective, because fortunately, Muslims don't know about fake IDs. Shhhhh, nobody tell them.

See Hblask's post for another of what I am sure are many many reasons that this is really pie in the sky stuff. We are just going to accept that air travel (like car travel) has some risk. The best maybe, sorta kinda practical improvement we could make, I think, is to upgrade the x-ray machines at airports. But I am sure the cost would be astronomical. Fiscal responsibility is really, really hard!

Here's the problem: there are 6 billion people in the world and way fewer names than that. I have a (distant) relative whose last name is Johnson. They are on the no-fly list. They have asked TSA why. It's because of their name. How do they get off the list? There is a way, says TSA, but we're not allowed to tell you.

So this person has to bring about a dozen notarized documents to the airport (he travels for business frequently), and give himself an extra 45 minutes while he is pulled aside and TSA has to call their superiors and check the stack of documents he has to bring.

Most of the names on the current no-fly list are false positives. Do you really want to add a half million people to that list? Maybe we could just put *everyone* on the no-fly list, and only the people who can guess the secret TSA procedure to get off the list should be able to fly?

Maybe if we could just move to the no fly list the names of those whose father calls and warns that his son may be invloved in a suicide mission. That is what happened in this case. That this guy was not on the no fly list was a massive fail on someones part.

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I call BADDAD.

There needs to be a movement away from a seemingly overly P.C. pre 911 attitude and a move towards more of a profiling one imo.

Ever fly EL AL? Someone once said it's like having an hour physical, complete with a colonoscomy. Pretty safe airline, that El AL.


Also, when police or FBI or anyone along those lines tries to solve a crime you don't blindly round up everyone in the entire City. You start by collecting data, pinning it all up on a board and do reasonable deduction and identifying similarities. PROFILING. narrow down the people "MOST LIKELY TOO" etc. If you fit that bill, then tough shit. That is the world we all live in for the moment.


and VB is not the most intelligent one here. Just the most brainy.

I agree with all the intelligent posts in this thread and disagree with all the really stupid ones.

His father only told the embassy that his son was getting way too into radical Islam. If he had mentioned that his son may be involved in a suicide mission (and had even the slightest credible evidence of it), that would be completely different.....no one here on either side would disagree with that.

Also, think of the potential abuse. X hates Y because of personal problems. X calls the American embassy and informs them that Y is a terrorist. Y is put on the no fly list for no reason other than that X has a grudge. Not feasible. And this X and Y scenario is exactly how so many innocent people ended up in Guantanamo with the true terrorists there. Especially if you start offering reward money too. I am not sure how practical this would be.

So wait...

...if it had been a massive coordinated attempt that resulted in getting a bomb on board the aircraft, then the Administration or Homeland Security would be at fault?

I agree with you that the expectation that we catch every attempt is just plain not reasonable. However neither is it reasonable to blame Bush for 911.

And to state that the System worked and is secure simply because the bomb didn't detonate is a complete fabrication. A 23 year old was able to get explosive material on board an aircraft - enough explosive material to blow a hole in in the side of the plane. That demonstrates a flaw in the system. If the flaw originates in Amsterdam, it is still a flaw in our overall plan.

Look. If someone smuggled a gun on a plane - that alone demonstrates a failure. Even if the gun wasn't ultimately used or misfired or didn't have bullets. If Napolitano said: "Sure he got a gun through security, but the system worked because he didn't get the bullets through." Would you buy it?

Besides now even Napolitano is calling this a failure:

Dang.

I'll try harder.

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I believe David Benyamine was once identified on the no-fly list due to his name being the same/similar to another's.

Again, I like the sentiment but I wonder about the feasibility. El Al can do this because they are one airline that services one small country and limited routes. Could this be done on a massive scale for a gigantic country like America without massive disruptions and prohibitive costs? Can we do profiling when so many Muslim names are so similar? Will we just end up doing more damage by pissing off every Muslim who gets cavity searched?

I think we are doing a pretty decent job now. People are more on the ball and alert to threats. A foolproof system is impossible.

I agree that the Netherlands security system failed. I just dont know if the US can make every country do what we want them to in terms of security.

Of course you are correct on this point. I did read at least one article that stated his father warned of him being involved in a suicide mission.

But you are right about the potential abuse. I still think this guy should have been stopped before he ever got on the plane. He probably won't be able to get on one again.

OK, I know you've all been waiting for the real solution.

Step 1. Get rid of TSA.

Step 2. Pass a law that every airline must provide $10,000,000 of life insurance for every passenger on every flight, payable if a terrorist attack on the plane kills that person.

Step 3. Put the insurance companies in charge of security at airports.

(Maybe a different order would be better, but you get the point....)

Step 4. Quit pissing off the world.