My honest anwer is that the September 26 changes were a miserable attempt to backtrack on the infantile August 10 ban - one which has been shown to make zero logical sense from a variety of angles. Instead of admitting that the Chertoff/Hawley childish ban on liquids made absolutely no sense, they compounded their foolishness by adding some Sandra Day O'Connor-inspired intricacies to the prohibited items list.

Could terrorists use these new rules to smuggle aboard some binary explosive material? Sure. And Kang and Kodos might be the candidates in the 2008 Presidential election. Neither is likely enough (IMO) to spend much time worrying about. Might terrorists have smuggled aboard larger quantities of binary explosive material had the Aug 10 ban not been instituted at all? Sure they could. But an adult risk management model gives the same answer - it's like worrying that Kang and Kodos will impersonate our candidates for President.