After reading the the article way back Post #1 on Page 1, I feel great sorrow for the passengers and crew aboard those airplanes. They deserved to arrive at their final destination. They deserved to live out their lives with their families. The people in the World Trade Center towers deserved to go to work that day and return home safely. They deserved to live out their lives with their families. The people working at the Pentagon deserved to go to work that day and return home safely. They deserved to live out their lives with their families. The emergency personnel who on a regular basis put their lives on the line, unselfishly entered the World Trade Center towers in hopes of rescuing people. I am sure in their line of work they must have realized that they were never leaving those buildings alive. God Bless all of them. They too deserved to go to work that day and return home safely. They deserved to live out their lives with their families.

We are talking about real people here. Because those *******s used our own airplanes as bombs, there are children who have lost a parent, children who will never know a parent, people who were widowed before they ever should have been, etc.

Why bicker, nag, pick and whine about airport security screening? In the grand scheme of things, how much does it really matter? Obviously, nothing is fool-proof. Yes, TSA could be focusing on something different other than lighters and shoes. No doubt about it. Are pat-downs uncomfortable? You bet they are. I don't like them, but I sure the hell can put up with it so long as they are treating me the same as the next person. In this world, it is difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Unfortunately, we won't know how well airport security is actually working until the next hijacking. I hope we can call it "attempted hijacking" or better yet, stop the *******s in the tracks at the airport before the plane takes off.

Let's all try to remember what's important.

Interesting then that the self-appointed spokesman for al-Qaeda, UBL, made numerous references to the loss of the Ottoman Empire days and directly indicated in his video of October 2001 that the WTC II attacks were a delayed Muslim response to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1919 and subsequent Western colonialism.

Check out the facts for yourself. Try UBL's video text of 10/01. Historical honesty works. Do not be afraid of the truth.

.... and your ability to read or understand spoken Arabic relying upon your own faculties is great, right? And translations and take aways are always correct, right?

After all, a self-avowed spokesman/defender of terrorism will always speak the truth. And such persons would never make a grandiose statement to try to gain more recruits in an attempt to gain greater geographic influence. Never.

Simple minds require that there has to be a simple principal cause/reason, for the idea of multiple causality just confuses simple minds to the point of their seeking security in an oversimplified world of their own mind's creation.

Anti-(European)colonial sentiment plays a large part in the minds of OBL and the like-minded (amongst others) as does their desire to see that manifestation of anti-colonial or xenophobic sentiment which is often terrorism; however, the reason for such sentiment is not simply to reconstitute the Sick Man of Europe; it's to go back even further to an ARAB not TURKISH (read: Ottoman) "calipahte" where external powers had lesser influence in "the Arab Heartland".

Hold on a second, I thought one of the points you or someone else raised about security was how it needed to look ahead at the new threat instead of fighting the old one. Basing security searches solely on metallic objects has been proven ineffective. We have to consider the non-metallic threat. As long as TSA conducts its searches based on the principle of looking for items that may pose a threat to commercial aviation, then its actions are legal and legitimate. In other words, looking for plastic explosives is a bona fide security search; looking specifically just for illegal drugs is not. With all that legal mumbo jumbo you love to try to impress us with, I am surprised you overlooked this very simple and fundamental legal point. As for fines, that's beyond my scope as a screener. You may have a point there, but frankly, I thought we were talking about checkpoint and baggage screening not the administrivia that occurs above my level. I think passengers who bring firearms through the checkpoint ought to be fined; I don't think passengers who bring a butcher knife or can of spray paint should. However, I don't know how fines are assessed.

You and I violently agree that selectee passenger screening is a waste of time for the exact same reason: if the first screening is adequate, then why the additional search? However, you refuse to see the political reality that this type of screening, even though you and I both agree is a waste of time, is here to stay.

Actually, the sign of a successful black op is when you don't hear about it or, if you do, it's years after the fact. If you want to believe that the Clinton administration didn't conduct any aggressive special ops, then go right ahead and stay content in your beliefs. By the way, I am no fan of Bill Clinton; however, I'm not about to give in the mindless political rhetoric that paints him as an ineffective leader who didn't do anything against terrorism. We can remain in disagreement over this; I won't lose any sleep over it.

Oh give me a break. "Me? Prejudiced? Why some of my best friends happen to be......" In your previous comment, you assumed that the two Arab men were foreigners because they didn't speak English. How do you know they weren't American citizens? Did you look at their passports? Otherwise, I suppose they ought to be treated as foreigners since they didn't speak English, right? Right. Here's what you're missing: Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is not the only threat to aviation; there are different types of threats ranging from terrorism by other non-Islamic entities as well as your plain old garden variety criminal threat from some wacko who may want to hijack an airplane for any reason other than terrorism or other political-religious motivation. What you call for is another Maginot Line that looks exclusively at the threat posed by stereotypical Muslim fanatics. Have to think outside the box, my friend.

"Think outside the box"? When TSA concentrates so exclusively on passengers, and does not screen cargo transported on airliners, allows all sorts of airport and airline employees into sterile areas without screening (but pilots have to take off their shoes at checkpoints), and could not even get its staff up and running without hiring many convicted felons, telling a passenger to think outside the box is the pot calling the kettle black.

My basic point is that TSA, and the national government as a whole, is doing what the terrorists could not: destroy America by stripping away our rights. If there is objective evidence that non-Islamic terror groups are a threat to aviation, none of the media has reported that fact. Some outlet, whether CNN, the broadcast networks, bloggers, somebody, would have reported such a juicy story. The lack of any such story leads me to believe that no such threat exists. As I have said before, domestic terror has not concentrated on transportation. However, Islamic terrorists have a long history of such attacks. If rights are to be abrogated, abrogate those of the groups that have perpetrated such attacks, not American citizens, for two reasons. First, because Americans should have those rights in their own country. Second, because the odds are far higher that a young Islamic non-American male jabbering away in a foreign language in an airport is a terrorist than is an American. Observations that an experienced LEO, or screener, can point to as a suspicion of involvement in criminal activity- Terry v. Ohio - has some bearing to this point. If the Islamic world is unhappy about that fact, then it should do something about it, like condemning the practice of terrorism. The silence is deafening. Not legal mumbo-jumbo, just Midwestern red state common sense.

Right, and bin Laden is still steaming about the double-dealing of the British and French from the Sykes-Picot Agreement. You are partly correct, OBL is not that pleased with the "enforcement" of the Ottoman caliph over Arab lands for about 600 years, but it is all about transnationalism in his mind and reversing the "wrongs" inflicted upon the Muslim world by the infidels. OBL has no qualms about using "history" in order to gain greater support for his cause.

According to British Intelligence Officer and Neo-Con Bernard Lewis:
"Bin Laden has an intensely historical view of the world. He frequently refers to his enemy as �crusaders.� The Crusaders, it may be recalled, were neither Americans nor Jews. His general vision comes through fairly clear: He sees this as an ongoing struggle for more than 14 centuries between the two rival world religions. For a long time Christians were in retreat, Muslims were advancing. Then came the series of bitter defeats: the loss of Spain, the invasion of the Muslim lands by European Christian imperialists, and what he calls the final humiliation, the defeat in 1918 of the last of the great Muslim states, the Ottoman Empire. Its ruler was captured, its territory partitioned. And he sees himself engaged in the great counterattack, of which phase one is to oust the unbelievers from the lands of Islam and thus prepare the stage for the next and final stage: the battle for world religious leadership and, with it, domination."

Bernard Lewis is ancillary to anything in this forum, but your over-reliance on over-simplified "history" is unfortunately too typical. He's a class act idiot who was telling people in the 80s and 90s that an unstable Afghanistan won't be a problem and that post-colonial nation-states should be kept destabilized if they have even the slightest opportunity to be regional powers. What a fool he was then and still is. Lewis's hatred for Persians (Arabs more so and muslims in general) showed in that he was an advocate of Afghanistan being a proxy conflict between the Pakistanis and Iranians -- a proxy conflict that suited OBL & Co. quite well in biting the hand that once fed them -- not in the interest of freedom but in the interest of state submission to his own tribalists. [.... and his racist sentiments against Asians -- and South Asian Indians in particular -- is even more telling than Kissinger's or Nixon's.]

If you care to discuss such ancillary topics as the "history" product of "class acts" whose "beautified" racism and other bigotry is not unrecognized, I suggest a move to OMNI. But I am not interested in following you there to discuss Bernard Lewis's tripe that is wholly unrelated to aviation security and began long before this board was even live.

And on a related note, the US government "foolishly" created a training ground haven and recruitment center in Japan after 12/41. The Japanese only had 1.7 million men in their Army alone on December 7th, 1941. By the end of the War in '45 their Army had 5.5 million men, and after we wasted 1.5 million of them in 3 1/2 years. One would assume that the US government would have learned their lesson from WWII about "invading" other nations and "assisting" with the enemies troop recruitment. If only we had left the Japanese alone and conceded to their demands on December 8th, 1941. But nooo......and here we go again in Iraq.

Look at the al-Qaeda recruitment booklets:
http://www.siteinstitute.org/bin/art...&Subcategory=0

As for your first sentence in no.3 - probably so if adhering to your choice of Clintonian verbalism. Cutting through your limp attempt at disinformation I only found more verbosity.

According to the facts found by the FBI, DIA, NSA, and the CIA (who you use as a selective definitive source for your points), and detailed in the 16 page memo from Douglas Feith in 50 points, Iraq and al-Qaeda are/where linked. Why was Yasin (chemical mixer for WTC I) hanging out in Saddam's haven since '95 and on his payroll? How about al-Zarqawi based in Iraq? Remember him? al-Zawahiri? Why did 2 dozen al-Qaeda members in Afghan set up shop in Saddam land 2 weeks before the 9/11 attacks?

... you will find what you want to find. Of that I have no doubt.

Except for Saddam Hussein and "Yasin", none of the other fellows you mentioned above are Iraqis.

1. Can you consider use of more complete names hereafter since there are only 10 million+ Yasins.
2. Can you consider referring to the first attack on the WTC as something other than WTC I and the second one as WTC II.

Anyone who is truly familiar with the WTC (buildings) knows that WTC I and WTC II are names for the two towers. However, I think your reason for referring to the 1993 and 2001 attacks as WTC I and WTC II is the same reason that the spin-meisters who formulated the 2003 attack on Iraq do such too: namely, to advance the appearance of a link between the attack in the 1990s and the one in 2001. In any event, I believe your post to be more interested in advancing misinformation by using confusion as an ally than in being completely factual. Just my opinion.

And why did you fail to mention that the blind Egyptian sheikh who enabled and encouraged the first attack on the WTC towers was on the US payroll prior to 1993?

Re: Douglas Feith. Feith manufactured evidence that did not exist (and advanced fictions). You too can obviously try your best to spin fantasies like Douglas Feith -- fantasies which make up fanciful connections by piecing together a story out of some facts, some fictions and lots of false links; however, the product of such adventures in (accepting) revisionism (as demonstrated above) is not a demonstration of intelligence (or even decent reasoning); it's typical historical revisionism -- creating a story about past events to serve political interests regardless of a greater body facts that crop fiction out of the picture. About historical revisionism, it probably offends OBL no more than it offends those who adhere to such thinking as presented in your post.

.... and contrary to your above fabricated claims (which I know to be without substance yet again), those agencies you mentioned are not necessarily a selective (or exclusive) definitive source for my points in this thread or others. Not that you would necessarily know what that means.

Profiling again on the basis of country of origin. Now GU.........how dare you. I thought you were opposed to profiling.

Contrary to your implication, I was not engaged in racist profiling (even associated along country of origin or residence). You, on the other hand, are not opposed to racist profiling. Or has your position radically changed since your last posts on the matter? I doubt it.

It is you who have a record of believing in "guilt by association" and "links" by such, right?

Oh, you mean Sheik Omar Abdel Rahmen?

And why are you reading the playbook from this site:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

You are free to believe what you want, just like Scientologists are free to believe that Xenu has implanted evil spirits into Earthlings.

According to them, you have just murdered all of us, because we're not "ready" to know that bit of holy knowledge, and our bodies will reject it by contracting fatal pneumonia

But let's not stray tooooo far from the topic

Re. Para 1. Basically, yes (any variation of spelling his name in English is fine by me.)
Re. Para 2. Contrary to your implication, I was not.
Re. Para 3. Yes, but I'll let the facts influence me more than ideology.