OK. A lot to respond to, so here goes:

I don't believe the 'water terrorists' in the UK were dry running (bad pun). But I do think that there are some domestic intel gatherers operating to a limited degree, and looking for weak spots to maybe exploit later.

It's true, the water ban has nothing to do with anything except showing the American people 'Look, we're doing something about the new threat'. I really wish the media had just kept this whole darn incident quiet, and let the police in the UK get at these people on their own.

Think back pre-9/11. How were the security checkpoints any different then (water / gel bans excluded)? They really weren't. Box cutters and other small cutting articles were allowed, but that is really the only security screening difference I see. Now those articles are prohibited (as they should have been in the first place). Taking off the shoes is a pain in the rear end, but it is easy enough. Granted, I am also a healthy person, so bending over and taking them off is no big deal to me. I know for others that it isn't.

As others have posted, there have been several good steps taken, without the need for overkill. Got it. And for the most part, I agree.

Wally Bird, I'd have to break out the Poor Man's James Bond and see if there are any kind of explosives that can be made in that manner. I know that Bleach can be mixed with other substances for some pretty nasty gaseous effects; I'm not sure about explosives. I don't know if gasoline or rubbing alcohol smuggled in a plastic water bottle would melt the bottle, or if enough could be brought in to do damage, but it could start a nasty fire on board, causing panic and other mayhem. I would say that you could probably fashion Det cord into shoelaces, but the explosive sniffers would probably catch that. I guess that a toothpaste tube could theoretically be filled with C4 or PETN or RDX or some other nasty explosive compound.

Now, is it enough of a worry to ban all of these common articles? Not to me, but how about the average American voter? I don't mind checking this stuff, if only the airlines could get it back to the luggage carosel quickly after the flight. And some airports are better at this than others.

What evidence do you have, other than your imagination?!?

Not a new threat. Liquid explosives were part of Bojinka.

And that's all that should have been changed. The TSA admits that the X-ray machines will not detect explosives in shoes.

We're way past overkill here -- very deep into insanity valley, I'd say.

No one has been arrested and no one has been injured attempting to enter my home without a warrant.

I hadn't broken any laws so I just put the little rat on ignore. Worked well.

'What evidence do you have, other than your imagination?!?'

None whatsoever. My theory is just that: a theory, an educated guess, a probability based on our current world situation.

I'm not one, however, to just ignore the likelihood that we are being watched. Not like McCarthyism with a commie behind every tree, but by patient, intelligent people who are either being well paid or are zealous enough in their religious beliefs to want to harm us. The fact that the British caught these people in the UK preparing for an attack should indicate that there are plans afoot. Or the person arrested in Germany for putting a bomb on the train that did not go off. These people are out there.

Al Qaeda is a cancer, and we are helping to spread it with our foreign policy. But I still don't want to see anymore people of this world get killed by religious whackos who think that killing people who believe in a different fairy tale is a morally sound thing to do.

It is probably safe to say that we are being watched - in a Bloopers and Practical Jokes sense. Take a trip through the Islamic world, and I am in the moderate part of it now; we look pretty funny to them right now.

Indeed, the misguided and apparently not very bright blokes in the UK believed (or at least the one who did the video believed it) that they had a workable plan to bring down airplanes. However, the fact that they blogged about for months would indicate some possibility that there might also have been an attempt to impress friends / maybe some girls? Once again, we are not talking about the brightest lights on the block here. They must not have done much research on their plan, otherwise they would have known the Ramzi Yousef actually exploded a nitroglycerin (much worse than TATP) bomb under the window seat of an airplane and was only successful in killing the poor Japanese businessman in the seat...everybody else landed safely in the plane.

I agree that Al Qaeda needs to be removed and that as long as people like that exist that we all need to be vigilant. However, jumping at shadows and then reacting by using a shotgun approach to security is not helpful.

And if we continue to overreact to lame-brained threats by restricting individual liberties further, then Al Qaeda has already won the war...hasn't it.

I couldnt have said it better.

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Agreed on all the sterile bought stuff, Bart. That's just common sense. Same for the original, sealed bottle.

I also think that if you take a swig of the stuff and don't start doing the dying cockroach on the airport floor, that is a pretty good indicator that the liquid is safe. Chemists out there---are there any liquids that can be consumed and still be potentially hazardous?

I had also hoped that after the initial hubbub, that things would cool down somewhat. Maybe they have in some places.

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I'm not a chemist, but the chemisty in my background says "no" to that. The false-bottom bottles were the way around that, or so we hear. The sorts of compounds needed to create an explosive are pretty nasty.

Take TATP, for instance, which due to the London subway bombings is often cited as the "binary" explosive of choice for would-be terrorists (despite the fact that it isn't binary in that you don't just mix two reasonably inert substances together to get an explosive--the mixing takes hours, not seconds, and despite the fact that its sensitivity is such that it's not well-suited to anything but blowing oneself up whilst making it).

With TATP, the ingredients are nearly-pure acetone and 30% or greater hydrogen peroxide, neither of which can be consumed at a checkpoint without an obvious reaction--immediate gagging, vomitting, possible chemical burns to the mouth, etc. MEKP, another peroxide explosive with a lower yield, would involve drinking methyl ethyl ketone or peroxide, again with similar results. Nitroglycerine would require drinking a toxic liquid (nitroglycerine itself), or acids that would immediately be apparent in their effect.

Of course, having someone drink the substance in question only works for beverages. A lot of us also would like to be able to carry small amounts of toiletries with us so we don't have to get them at the destination, check a bag, or ship them ahead.

Or getting it wrong so that it doesn't go off at all, just fizzes a bit. (The 'second' London subway bombers.)

Well, I must confess that I had a good hand pulled English Bitter a couple of mornings ago in Heathrow as part of my breakfast while waiting to come back stateside, so I can certainly sympathize with the young lass.

I'm guessing that the overall water restriction is not here to stay. I hope that I'm not proven wrong.

Chemistry in the hands of idiots can be a very dangerous thing for all concerned. Acetone, if my limited knowledge of chemistry is right, is nail polish remover. I imagine that it would take about half a plane of people's worth of nail polish remover to create a big enough bang to maybe bring down a plane. And nitroglycerin, although a common enough prescription medicine, would also require quite a bit of it.

False containers are an interesting topic, though. Can the x-ray detect the false compartments?

Sigh. You have tried before to dismiss these incidents as 'legends'. No matter, I'm happy to help your memory.
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/milk.htm

I don't remember the girl-and-crab thing, so I suspect it is a morphing of this:
http://archives.californiaaviation.o.../msg21490.html

You're welcome.

I didn't express myself clearly enough. My point wasn't that they might be seeing whether they could smuggle liquids aboard, but that having possibly done so why on earth would they then advertise the fact to everyone on board ? Which is what precipitated a couple of the 'incidents'. Seems a strange sort of probe.

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