I probably should let sleeping dogs lie. I probably would have posted earlier but have been to busy to be keeping up.

Just to start by answering Flyaways questions. I do not believe in saying mine is bigger than yours. Yet you seem to only want to hear from people that you feel are equivalent to yourself in experience. So here goes. I was a parachute qualified, ranger badged army officer. I do not have decorations for bravery because I was not in service in a time of war. I have studied war and terrorism since high school, I continue that study now. I did lose a couple of friends at the Khobar Towers bombings. I went through airborne school with a marine injured at the marine barracks bombing. I have been in England when the IRA set off bombs. I was even on a plane landing at Heathrow when the IRA set off improvised mortar/rockets from an adjacent car park. So hopefully I qualify to speak on this issue.

The majority of the governments response to airport security has been eye candy designed to get the public thinking that the problem is solved. Actually as I and many others have stated here and other areas, the major reason this operation succeeded was policy. If somebody got up and said they were hijacking the plane everybody was supposed to do what they said. No weapons needed, the same policy as at banks during a robbery. Changing that policy is the major solution to the attacks that occured. We also need to be honest that the terrorists can succeed in attacking if they want to. The only way to stop a terrorist is to destroy him.

England as you mention has had to deal with the IRA bombing long before the Harrods bombing. The reason Harrods was still open and available for business is that they had realized that you can try and make your target less vulnerable and more raise security awareness, but still be open. People still need to go about their business and not give in to threats.

The government can either be honest and say that there are still risks, or be stupid and give into hysteria and ban people from planes for what they look like, read etc. That is not to say that we don't profile, search luggage etc. As someone already mentioned, how many other people were looked at less carfully if there really were 12 "security" personel on this one issue. I can agree in only allowing people flying that day should to go through the security check point. That means less people to look at. It is always better to limit the amount of people to search if we want it to be the most effective.

Actually a good book to read is the autobiography of the British commander during the Gulf. He makes an effective arguement that I agree with. The US response to attacks has been to more and more wall ourself off from the host country population. That has not protected us from attacks it has just made the terrorists increase the destructiveness of their attack. Actually Khobar was initially considered safer than necessary because of the size of explosive need to attack it and the safe area around the building.

His analysis is that it is easier to get the population to demonize us and accept/look the other way in attacks on us, if they do not interact with us. The same can be said of keeping people off of planes that have passed security. If the government keeps giving into hysteria the terrorists will have won because we will have walled off our popualtion both inside the US and the US from the rest of the world. That Flyaway will cause the US more damage than lax security will ever do. Again I do not suggest that we just open the gates but this type of incident is stupid. (though I will be the first to admit that I think there was more to this incident than was reported. The comment about an officer recognizing him from the earlier ruckus?) Still once he was determined to not be a threat he should have been put on board. As I said I still study war. I consistently carry on books that are military/ terrorism related. Many of which could be considered worse than his. These same books are on the reading lists of many spec ops officers.

Of the friends that I have talked to since 9-11 that are still on active duty, all would agree that we will have more incidents, they will not be the same and that we are wasting effort that could be used to prevent them trying to stop the last op. We needed to change policy, step up the red flag tests and then in general improve the security level around the US. Lets not try to win the last war again.



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Robert