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Pauline Frommer defends her dad
Do you think she is referring to the issues at JFK?
She may not be in TSA but she is more than just a kettle as she does travel writing for a living. She writes: The truth is: we have not had a successful terrorist attack on a plane since 9/11. To say that has only to do with the response of fellow passengers is naive. I've been at the airport twice in the past two months when the security line and ALL flights were paused, so that security incidents could be addressed. I'm a member of the public, not a TSA officer, so I don't know what those incidents consisted of. But I was impressed by the show of force and coordination these searches took (from what I could see). Its easy to diss the TSA. I say: look at their record of success instead. 4/2/2012 1:20 PM EDT |
Originally Posted by mules:18320659
Do you think she is referring to the issues at JFK?
She may not be in TSA but she is more than just a kettle as she does travel writing for a living. She writes: The truth is: we have not had a successful terrorist attack on a plane since 9/11. To say that has only to do with the response of fellow passengers is naive. I've been at the airport twice in the past two months when the security line and ALL flights were paused, so that security incidents could be addressed. I'm a member of the public, not a TSA officer, so I don't know what those incidents consisted of. But I was impressed by the show of force and coordination these searches took (from what I could see). Its easy to diss the TSA. I say: look at their record of success instead. 4/2/2012 1:20 PM EDT |
Originally Posted by mules
(Post 18320659)
Do you think she is referring to the issues at JFK?
She may not be in TSA but she is more than just a kettle as she does travel writing for a living. She writes: The truth is: we have not had a successful terrorist attack on a plane since 9/11. To say that has only to do with the response of fellow passengers is naive. I've been at the airport twice in the past two months when the security line and ALL flights were paused, so that security incidents could be addressed. I'm a member of the public, not a TSA officer, so I don't know what those incidents consisted of. But I was impressed by the show of force and coordination these searches took (from what I could see). Its easy to diss the TSA. I say: look at their record of success instead. 4/2/2012 1:20 PM EDT I used to like Frommers and I used their books with great pleasure many, many years ago when I first ventured overseas. I think that it's a shame they haven't moved on, an organisation that I used to have a real fondness for now feels like an embarrassing old uncle that you'd prefer not to acknowledge. |
Arthur is back, this time advocating even more extensive and frequent pat-downs by the TSA because of the latest version of the underwear bomber. He doesn't bother to mention that the perp was actually an agent of Saudi Intelligence working in concert with our CIA.
(...) Now, with the news out of Yemen about an attempted Al Qaeda plot to pack explosives into underwear pouches, those sarcastic criticisms of the TSA's misplaced zealotry seem a bit weak, don't they? (...) And I for one will be grateful for the half-hour delays in boarding flights that are caused by TSA agents patting down the arms, legs, and torsos of passengers. I wonder whether the authors of these caustic anecdotes about TSA extremism will lapse into silence in the days ahead. And though I fully expect them to persist in their smug arrogance about the foolishness of TSA procedures, or about claims that full-body scanners are an expensive waste, I hope that all of us will read their renewed criticism with the careful analysis that such diatribes should receive. Let's hope that in the days ahead, TSA uses pat-down procedures even more frequently and extensively than before. (bolding mine) |
I posted a reply:
Arthur, let us examine your own piece with the careful analysis you mentioned. Underwear bombs are sewn into UNDERWEAR. Patting down arms, legs, and torsos will NOT discover underwear bombs. Because the underwear bombs are not on arms, legs, or torsos. The only way for a pat-down to discover an underwear bomb is if the pat-down includes hands on your privates. Yup - to find an underwear bomb, the pat-downs would require government agents to put their hands on your buttocks and crotches - because that's where the explosives are in those underwear bombs. How many people are you hoping to see get THAT treatment in the days ahead? How many children? |
Originally Posted by El Cochinito
(Post 18573480)
Arthur is back, this time advocating even more extensive and frequent pat-downs by the TSA because of the latest version of the underwear bomber. He doesn't bother to mention that the perp was actually an agent of Saudi Intelligence working in concert with our CIA.
Link to his blog entry |
Originally Posted by Global_Hi_Flyer
(Post 18574579)
I'm not even going to give that kook the satisfaction of reading his column. Unfortunately, I know some folks that contribute to his publications and worship the ground he walks upon.... including some that are in favor of even bigger government.
Those of us who are 'smugly arrogant' still are not being heard by enough people. The vast majority of Americans do not fly very often at all, and they tend to listen to voices such as Frommers. (I won't bother to list again some of the reasons why I advise against his material, as I have listed it many times here before) There are even FTers who travel infrequently, and who do listen to Frommer's advice. His voice is more reassuring that our voices, which continue to point out the glaring holes in security. People who are afraid aren't always going to listen to reason; many times they will choose instead to listen those who will make them feel better. |
He's at it again
He still seems to think that those of us who are against the scanners and patdowns are for no security at all. Perhaps he doesn't understand the lax security for airport workers, the slack inspection of cargo, and the easy bribing of TSA agents.
http://www.frommers.com/community/bl...errorism-skies "...Rather than respond to such outrage, I should like to suggest an experiment. I should like to ask the critics to do something positive, to suggest how they would replace the TSA and with what. Are they actually suggesting that we should simply board planes in the future without undergoing any security checks at all? (Who among us would feel easy about doing that?) They we should rely entirely on counter-intelligence personnel working away from airports? What about the suicide bombers that aren't apprehended by C.I.A. agents before they reach an airport? Are they suggesting that racial profiling would do the trick?.." |
And yet again
It may be time for Mr. Frommer to stop flying. He is terrified. Now he says that the patdowns have been proven necessary because of the suicide bomber in Yemen at the military parade. I think some FTers have already been leaving comments.
http://www.frommers.com/community/bl...-tsa-pat-downs "...such an event serves to highlight the point -- as any fair-minded observer will, in my view, agree -- that it is no longer necessary for terrorists to break into the cockpit of a plane to bring it down, as they did on 9/11. And passengers aboard such a plane will no longer be able to subdue a terrorist who enters the lavatory of a plane to detonate the explosives he carries on his person, or who slips through intelligence efforts by the C.I.A. and others to discover such terrorists before they reach an airport. The only remaining line of defense is the TSA, examining passengers before they board the plane and often patting them down, in addition to using explosives-detecting swabs... ...So when you read these continuing efforts by writers we thought were serious, attempting to ridicule the TSA's work and make it into an un-American incursion on our liberties, ask yourself the question that I have repeated over and over: what do they suggest? Should we simply walk onto planes without undergoing security checks? Shall we really revert to pre-9/11 procedures that failed so miserably on the morning of 9/11? Or should we cooperate with the TSA and together work towards the defeat of terrorism." |
The only thing missing is a guest appearance on Fox News during May Sweeps.
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What a shame it is that Frommer, whose name and reputation carry so much weight in the travel industry, is so blinded by his fear that he cannot see the tremendous damage done to American civil liberties by the current TSA policies.
I've posted my response, not that I expect it to sway him in the least:
Originally Posted by WillCAD in response to Frommer's latest commentary
Once again, Arthur, you proceed from a false assumption that the pursuit of safety trumps the Constitutionally protected individual liberties and rights that so many Americans have given their lives to secure and defend for us over the last 200-odd years.
Those who signed the Declaration of Independence, listing the many intrusion on individual liberty perpetrated by the British government upon the American people as the reason for independence and war, did not feel that the pursuit of potential safety trumped the preservation of essential liberty. Those who fought in places like Valley Forge, the Alamo, Iwo Jima, and Bastogne did not feel that the pursuit of safety trumped the preservation of essential liberty. Those who marched with Martin Luther King, those who registered at the University of Alabama, those who engaged in the Montgomery Bus Boycott - none of them felt that the pursuit of safety trumped the preservation of essential liberty. Those who take issue with the concept of government agents peering beneath our clothing, irradiating us with untested, untried x-ray devices, putting their hands upon our persons, sticking their fingers inside our pants and collars, or touching our genetalia, all without warrant, probable cause, or articulable suspicion, do not feel that the pursuit of safety trumps the preservation of essential liberty. I certainly do not feel that the pursuit of safety trumps the preservation of essential liberty. It is a shame that you, Arthur, have so lost sight of what it means to be an American, that you have allowed fear and xenophobia to lead you to believe that the freedoms upon which our country was founded are somehow less important than a vain pursuit of mythical safety from far-distant hostile people. Our current situation if fleeting and transitory. But the damage done during this transitory crisis to the American dream of individual rights and liberties, will reverberate through history for decades, perhaps centuries, to come. Wake up, Arthur. We're all frogs in the American melting pot - and the water is beginning to boil. |
Great post WillCAD.
Someone also needs to remind Arthur that the failures of 9/11 were not airport security but rather a colossal failure of the "Intelligence" and security operations of the United States Government. That failure is the underlying reason for Congress' failure to hold TSA accountable for the abuses it inflicts daily on the flying public. |
Recently written by Frommer:
"Aw, man, people over 75 have relaxed security rules? Man, I wish they had implemented that when I turned 75 in 1972." Mike |
Originally Posted by patom
(Post 18636246)
Someone also needs to remind Arthur that the failures of 9/11 were not airport security but rather a colossal failure of the "Intelligence" and security operations of the United States Government.
I bet they have. And that would explain why Arthur Panty-Waisted-Chicken-Little Frommer is so desperate to divert attention to the actual security protocols of the time rather than an examination of the procedures advocated for flight crew and passengers. |
My comment must have struck a nerve - it's been deleted.
I feel like a celebrity. |
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