Elaboration:

Threat profiling involves many aspects such as country of origin, ethnicity, religion, traveling habits/patterns, etc. If you meet a certain profile, one should never be allowed into the U.S. and certainly the privilege of traveling by air should never be granted. Hell, Atta had overstayed his visa in 2000 and but was allowed back into the country again and he was also placed on an FBI terrorist watchlist in August of 2001.

As for the Lindh nutcase, he converted to Islam when he was 16 and in 1998 he began a 1 year "holiday" in Yemen, hobnobbing with fellow Isalmic radicals. He was allowed to return (under my proposed system he would not have been allowed to enter the U.S.) to the U.S. after this year and studied at a Mosque in San Francisco and finally left the Superpower in 2000 to join up with UBL.

Last but not least due to the WMD plot of this Koran reader, Padilla was arrested on May 8, 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport after arriving from Pakistan. Yes, threat profiling does work.

Just read chapter 7 of the 9/11 commission report that details the arrivals of these Islamists and it becomes evident that threat profiling would be an extremely effective solution to prevent terrorist acts.

It's funny but some of you guys still can't agree if flying is a privilege or a right.

If someone meets that profile but is not a terrorists but is deined the, as you state it, privilege to fly then what must that person do to visit our great country. The government system of making list, well it, it sucks. Innocent people will be affected in some case by their race, religion and travel habits.


Did they know this before or after he returned to the US? Hind Sight is alway 100% but its the present that we need to know that we just don't always know. So your threat profiling idea may keep some out but if we don't know anything about the people before hand then how can assume their a threat?

Do we just not allowed certian races, religions or people with certian travel habits to enter the country, even if they did nothing wrong?

Small knives, utility tools, etc. weren't allowed because FAA thought it was a good idea or did not recognize the potential threat. Rather, Congress required in law that FAA could not impose a regulation on the industry without a cost-benefit analysis. Since there had never been a death due to a small knife on U.S. aircraft, and only a couple actual hijackings with knives (which ended without any injuries), FAA could not show that the cost of the regulation was less than the benefit to be gained. FAA rules had to be approved by OMB before they could even be discussed with the industry. A rule to ban knives would have been laughed at by OMB.

Leo