Really? When was the last time you heard of government officials creating a line and then choosing some of them using the term "selectee."

My original post:

"Given the Nazi practice of "selection" (for gas chamber vs. work) it's pretty ugly to use the term selectee."

does not compare the TSA itself to the Nazis, but the term "selectee" to the Nazi's "selection" for the gas chambers.

However, the erosion of individual rights encompassed by the entire anti-terrorism effort is troublesome and to the extent that criticism of one's behavior by comparison to an accepted evil is OK with me.

We must never cease condemning the Nazis. Otherwise people will forget. Look at Ann Coulter resurrecting Joe McCarthy and making a small fortune at it. Maybe we haven't been trashing McCathyism enough lately.

When the TSA starts installing forced abour camps and ovens at airports then maybe you'll have a point. Plus those nasty Nazis weren't PC; they used racial profiling. We're random.

Random, my arse. There are a lot of random, selectees, but the percentage of minorities and women selected as a percentage of the travelling population is multiples higher. [The reasons for this are multiple, some very P.C., some as P.C. as the KKK.]

[This message has been edited by GUWonder (edited 07-12-2003).]

You're wrong.

I have been known to be wrong before. ;-)

Oh come on, now you ruined it. I wanted to get into a childish tit for tat argument http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

A single Stinger missile will not take down an airliner. A Stinger will shut down an engine (if it hits). Two Stingers could, in theory, turn an airliner into a glider with degraded aerodynamics, which might or might not make it to a suitable airfield.

Stingers are unlikely to be the missile of choice against airliners for cost reasons. A Soviet SA-7 would be about equally effective against an airliner at a third of the Stinger's cost (recent black market prices).

It's perhaps likely that an airliner could survive a missile strike to one of the engine pods, but if the missile impacted on the wing or the center fuel tanks I think that would be another story. I don't think it's public knowledge how Stingers are programmed to seek. I don't know if they seek the absolute hottest source (the engines) or if they seek the center of the whole IR image of the aircraft.

A Stinger strike that causes the engine to explode can also possibly shear through the hydraulic system, leading to loss of control and then loss of the plane.

While most airplanes have multiple hydrualic systems, they often seem to be run very close to each other so a catastrophic failure near one often takes out the others (especially on DC-10 aircraft).

This is very public knowledge, especially amongst certain Afghanis and Pakistanis. One of our Made In the USA stinger missiles went through a wall of someone in Kashmir, India a few years back. Was it the center of the whole IR image or the hottest spot of the wall? In either case, I bet you that guy probably did not attend training or slept through it. ;-)

One thing is certain. It was a mistake to arm the Afghans and Pakistanis ... and it was an even bigger mistake to funnel resources to them via Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda brethren and the ISI, CIA and Saudi Intelligence.

In politics, the dog will always consider biting the hand that feeds it. In political powerplays where violence is resorted, Frankensteins are created.

[This message has been edited by GUWonder (edited 07-15-2003).]

Tell this to the TSA which is still confiscating pen knives.