Originally Posted by
gsoltso
The fact that shoes are screened so closely here makes it next to impossible to use them on US flights. With the increased awareness it makes it less likely even at airports that don't use the same screening we do. That does not mean that there is no threat from it, seriously it takes 15 minutes to make a shoe bomb, it takes about 30 mins to make a pair of shoe bombs. You do not know what anyone is thinking unless they tell you (and even then it is a crap shoot), so to say that no one is trying to harm aviation by using shoe bombs is like rolling dice. This does not mean that I think there are legions of loonies with a pair sitting in the closet waiting for the day they cna use them, it simply means that this is a tool in the terror loony toolbox, and one that is fairly simple to use in the right circumstances.
And again, West, this is TSA Kool Aid.
TSA admitted in the LA Times as late as 2006 that there hadn't even been a single attempt at a shoe bomb since Reid. And that's before TSA instituted the mandatory shoe carnival. All we have now was Kippie saying shoe bombs were a continued threat because he said they were. No evidence to point that there actually WAS/IS a continued threat.
What was it about the institution of the water carnival that suddenly raised shoes to a threat that there had to be a mandatory shoe carnival? Prior to that, I could take a secondary, have my shoes swabbed and been on my way.
You can argue that a shoe bomb can be made quickly, or that any loonie can make them. However, as stated earlier, look at the rest of the world. If shoe bombs are such a threat to aviation, why aren't there planes falling out of the sky in nations that don't have the shoe carnival? Clearly, either the rest of the world is just lucky, or shoe bombs AREN'T the threat that TSA makes them out to be.
And I'll ask you the same question I've asked Ron. I've asked TSA many times and no one has ever answered this. Pan Am 103 was a successful terror attack using a bomb placed in the cargo hold. Why does TSA continue to ignore and delay screening of cargo when there's been a successful terror attack and killed people, and could easily still succeed in the future while it spends all this time and money on shoe bombs that one nutjob tried once and failed, and hasn't even been attempted ever since in the rest of the world where shoes AREN'T examined?
I think the answer is clear: TSA focuses on what the public can see, despite the fact that the most danger lies in areas where the public CAN'T. If the public CAN'T see it, then clearly, TSA really isn't all that interested. That's apparent from the lack of security measures on the employee/underbelly side because it's "too hard" or "costs too much." Of course, TSA doesn't seem to care about the expense or resources on the
showroom visible side.