While Americans flying within America are asked to show ID for domestic travel, the two countries* where 76% of all of the world's wounding and fatal terrorist attacks happened in the latest year for which I had full data (i.e., the full calendar year 2004) do not require ID for domestic flights. Given that neither of those two countries had an incident of a domestic flight being hijacked or bombed by an individual on board the plane during that time, the absence of ID checks for domestic commercial pax flights didn't seem to create more terrorists nor did the absence of required ID checks for domestic commercial pax flights induce terrorists to board a plane and hijack or bomb it.

In any event, I don't see how demands for ID in the current environment provide any security from terrorist attacks. ID is NOT security, but it sure does provide many with a false sense of security; and thus Congress and the Executive will continue down the wuss path.


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* In 2004, 44% of the world's wounding and fatal terrorist attacks -- measured by the number of incidents -- happened in India AND 32% of the world's wounding and fatal terrorist attacks happened in Iraq. (This is a measure of the number of incidents and not a measure of the number of individual persons wounded or killed.)