Tough day at Ted's Tequila Hut?

There is no good reason to ask for ID at the airport.

I don't agree with a drinking age, but carding someone is to enforce this existing law.

You have been accused of committing a traffic violation. Is traveling by air a violation now too?

Next time, try the Everclear.

Deleted

"They" don't need to look for ways to defeat the current system. Thanks to the gross incompetence of Comrade Secretary Mineta and his disgusting little cadre of subordinates, the current system can be defeated at will. In fact, it doesn't really do much more than act like a scarecrow. One hopes the crows get scared, because the stuffed dummy doesn't do much else.

Explosives can be taken past the check point at will. I don't think I can make that any clearer, but I'll repeat it: at will. Why? Because Comrade Secretary Mineta and his minions like DEN FSD Patrick Ahlstrom continue their disgusting little shoe perversions while doing nothing about explosives in undergarments or in body cavities.

Terrorists: you have carte blanche to proceed. Explosives in the pants, blasting cap in the laptop. A straw tightly packed with gunpowder might even suffice, though it's unlikely a real blasting cap will be noticed if you put it near similar looking components. Thank you, Comrade Secretary Mineta. And thank you to all the filth like Comrade Patrick Ahlstrom who perpetuate the Comrade Secretary's little shoe antics.

Bart -- Interesting comments and I agree with your assessment of "dumb luck" playing a big part in these types of operations -- ie: "The Fog of War." The bad guys had the time, place, and element of surprise completely under their control, so they could afford to have all sorts of practice runs and be very cautious. I think a lot of this cautiousness had to do with the huge investment OBL made in these guys, in terms of cost, training, and time. I'm not sure he had thought through the communications required to plan for all contingencies. For example, what would have been their contingency plan if one or more of the groups had not made their flights for one reason or another? Because of compartmentalized security, I'm not sure anyone on a particular hijacking team knew about the others, let alone be able to communicate with them. Would they have aborted the entire attack? Who knows? Maybe one of their success criteria was just to attempt a hijacking? I'm thinking like a J-3 or J-5 guy here, so perhaps I'm giving them too much credit for wringing out every possible thing that could go wrong with the operation and developing contingency plans. All of this would required centralized control of the operation, which I suspect didn't exist after OBL said "go." Some of the flights left late. Did the success of the attack, including the element of surprise, hinge on on-time departures of all four flights? Who knows? If the good guys had apprehended one of the teams, would they have assumed that there were more teams that day? How would we have reacted? I haven't seen anything come out of the War Colleges yet, but that's where some deep thinking and analysis needs to occur.

Deleted

I think this is a good assumption. Unfortunately, it appears that nobody bothered to think these kinds of scenarios through, or if they did, they never bothered to communicate it to anyone who mattered. If you read the 9/11 report, it's clear that nobody who could have made a difference had ever even considered one plane being hijacked like this, let alone four.

Of course, we did have all of the "dots" that this type of attack was in the works, and even that some of these people were up to something (even if we didn't know what that something was) no good. Unfortunately, we didn't connect those dots or keep a close enough eye on the people we knew were dangerous.

Yeah, wanting to travel around the country is certainly equivalent to breaking the law. At least, in East Germany if you didn't have the proper "papers."

Deleted

Why would any self-respecting terrorist even bother trying to get an IED thru the checkpoint when they could have an airline's cargo department just put the damn thing on a plane?

If one is an Islamofascist terrorist, then the suicide bombing is the ticket to all of those virgins in paradise. Any infidel can put an explosive in the cargo hold.

Most of the comments in this forum aren't of the "kumbaya" type, but rather of the balancing liberty with security, or balancing liberty with fake security type.

I agree with Bart's 'world's a dangerous place' pronouncement, but TSA in its wisdom, as Bart has ALSO always maintained, is committed to 100% risk AVOIDANCE. Any simulacrum to the real world, which sure as hell IS a dangerous place, must be swallowed hard to get that bit of TSA logic down the throat. In my opinion, any guiltless citizen forced to stand in line and pay to get any form of strip search is already underscoring the point. Not only is this world a dangerous place, there are nasty people in it. Some want to blow you out of the sky because you are an infidel, and some want to force you to be patted down because of an 'attitude' or no cause at all.

Nasty folks all.

Most all Islamofascist terrorists are not suicidal; and nearly all Islamofascists want to live to see their objectives achieved. So a terrorist (including witting enablers) smuggling an IED through the checkpoint -- or putting together one from supplies available airside -- and/or (also) getting one onto the plane via the cargo holds is still a real possibility. Terrorists who believe their political objective are worth more than their own life AND terrorists who believe their political objective is less than their own life are both problems. Although the former may go for the cockpit still or carry-on/travel-with "opportunity", the latter may still exploit the cargo window of "opportunity".

Deleted

What an interesting choice of words. Particlulary with reference to hyperbole.

Are you suggesting the time to defend liberty is only once a people are fully oppressed? How many cuts into the death of thousand cuts is one expected to endure before saying "ouch?"

Forward looking slipperly slope arguments are always dangerous and open to ridiculous conclusions, but that cuts both ways in the pro-liberty v. pro-security debate.

I love liberty a bit more than I love security. If that is the death of me, so be it, at least I lived free.