Along the same lines as above: the above named person had documents in his "old" name still.

Even after extensive background checks for Security Clearance, we have people such as Ames (sp?) and Walker. As I write, there is a backlog in processing applications for new security clearances. We haven;t got the resources to do background checks on air travellers even if such investigations made any sense, which we know is ridiculous.

Are you saying not getting a ticket is a foolproof indicator that one should not be suspected but a middle easter looking male is logically a suspect?

I think anyone whose name or phsyical description includes Whyte, or a vairiation there of should be singled out.

Which is unresponsive to the point that when you blow up a bus you only get the people directly in the blast radius, but a relatively small explosion on a plane has a much larger impact.

Al Qaeda is looking to "improve" upon 9/11. A huge plot to bomb airliners accomplishes that. Small scale bus bombs don't.

Of course, if the terrorists had any clue about us, they'd do effective things like bomb the food court at a shopping mall the Friday after Thanksgiving, or the security line outside the Superbowl, or the line at the local DMV. But for now it's apparent that they're still fixated on air travel.

OBL & Co. has hit more buses and marketplaces than planes and continues to do so. So apparently Al-Qaeda favors small scale bus bombs over attacks on planes. So the so-called fixation on air travel (over other targets) is more fiction than reality when it comes to terrorism attacks. Also, it's more fiction than reality that Al-Qaeda is looking to "improve" upon 9/11; instead they are looking for more than bigger as long as it leads to more financial drain and divisive knee-jerk reactions. Cheaper and easier to do, and "success" in the attack is less important than provoking the reaction.

Yes, "if the terrorists had any clue about us", then they'd also do sort of as you suggest above. They already do.

So what's your solution? Change nothing, let things go the way they were? If the terrorists bring down a plane with liquid explosives do you promise to get up here and cheer the government for inaction and declare that the risk was acceptable?

Or how about ban all carry on? Can the air travel industry survive that?

We can either go after things or people. Somehow, I think it will be more effective to go after the people.

I'd say that knowledgeable travelers, such as most FT participants, understand that the appropriate response--in a utilitarian sense--to the foiled U.K. plot is to do nothing, or very little, or at most, devise some kind of behind-the-scenes process or equipment to improve detection. Even if the U.K. plot succeeded, overall air travel would still be relatively safer than automobile driving, for example. However, knowledgeable travelers make up only a small number of voters.

Most voters are occasional users of the air transport system and from their point of view (and reinforced by media coverage), safety is compromised to some degree. Something visible to them needs to be done. Suppose the authorities did nothing and some incident did occur in the near future. There would be calls for the heads of everyone in charge for being idle in the face of a known threat.

Thus, I conclude that the realistic path forward is to try to make new restrictions to be as efficient and pain-free as possible--yes, try to get rid of them, but recognize that a situation without ANY publicly-visible action is probably not politically feasible. And certainly resist any further initiatives, especially those that are personally intrusive.

Going after people isn't effective by itself. How about going after "root causes" to "drain the swamp" (as the dear leader-clique loved to put it)? To do as I mention herein, far easier, far cheaper (and actually even a money saver), and certainly more effective vis-a-vis terrorism -- especially since most terrorism is not defeated by intelligence, law enforcement and military efforts but by political solutions.

What we'll get for a whole variety of reasons -- including those that AlaninDC mentioned -- will be a fixation on objects and a fixation on persons. We already have both in play.

So far we've seen the Madrid and London subway bombings, which had a small percentage of the impact of 9/11. They then tried to follow it up with the latest plot, which would have been greater than 9/11. Looks to me like air travel is still a pretty big target for them.

Small scale bus/train bombs are easier to pull off, but their impact is much less. Given a choice, the terrorists would much rather bring down an airliner.

It's probably a bit late for that. The solution would take a generation if it could work. And appeasement doesn't have a real strong track record.

Between the UK arrests and the above post terrorists have already killed civilians on the ground; and those attacks had nothing to do with bringing down an airline. So much for the theory that "the terrorists would much rather bring down an airliner". That is, the above timeline implicit in the post above is not correct; it leaves out a whole stream of terrorist attacks that have happened between "the Madrid and London subway bombings" and "the latest plot" involving OBL & Co writ so very large. And nearly all of those had nothing to do with air travel.

The impact of terrorism can also be measured by the government and societal responses that follow an attack or a bust-up. By such measure, even the absence of an executed attack this time has greater impact than the London and Madrid attacks noted above. However, it is clear that more people were killed in the London and Madrid bombings than in this plot. Does that mean that there was less impact or more impact from this plot than those bombings?

It's clear to those that actually look at hard data in this area that air travel is the part of commercial passenger transportation that is far less frequently hit by terrorists than other modes. Of course that fact doesn't sell well to the stirred-up paranoid crowd or to the neo-PC crowd that says "don't harass me, harass 'them'; I don't look like a terrorist, 'they' do, so go after them".

Maybe to you. I don't accept so willingly what the government tells me. Anyway, how would we know if al Qaeda were planning to blow up a thousand buses simultaneously? Or a hundred subway trains?

Bruce

There you go again (thank you, Ronald Reagan!), thinking like a terrorist. Where, pray tell, do you get these deep insights?

Bruce

No, anything but too late for that. It's reality that in the past few decades most larger-scale terrorist organizations fizzle out when a political resolution is reached and the "causes-celebres" no longer exist. Nothing to do with appeasement to note such; nothing to do with appeasement to act on such since it pulls the ideological rug from out under the feet of terrorists. Of course, throwing out that "appeasement" label certainly is sexy as it continues to be used to put up smoke and mirrors and deflect us from actually "draining the swamp".