It looks like Dummy's bound and determined to attack Iraq. What are the implications on domestic and foreign air travel when this happens? I wasn't traveling much during the last round, so don't have experience to draw on.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the easy time I just had booking WBC awards to both SIN and BCN on NW?

-alan in seattle

American and United battle it out over new hub in Baghdad.

Southwest runs $249 RT JFK-BAGHDAD flights.

alanw, do you have better plans for what is best for the US and the World?
In other words, what do you think THe PRESIDENT should do, that you would approve of?

I'm not sure this belongs in TravelBuzz - more like Omni, first of all.

Secondly, I've tried to stay out of most anti & pro-war threads, as it seems like my $0.02 ain't gonna change things much, and I don't have the necessary visibility to determine how much of a threat Iraq really is.

With that said, I think it's pretty closed minded to call our President a dummy. I may not always agree with all the decisions he makes, but he is our leader and unless he gets impeached, I'm going to give him the respect I think he deserves.

I hope we don't have a war, as it's pretty terrible to see people die. However, we have to be careful not to let down our guard and become "wimpy", as the Clinton administration CLEARLY demonstrated. Clinton's legacy of non-confrontation got us 9/11, so let's not forget that either.

I would love to hear of other people's experiences traveling during the time of the Gulf War and other similar stories. I think the subject of the thread is great, although the politics don't belong in this forum.

--richard, moderator

In early '91, I was working for a big (multi-billion revenue) company, and I had to fly US to Japan. Company policy, due to the Gulf situation, was that no employees were allowed to fly overseas on any US or British flagged carrier.

JAL business class was very nice, but I wanted AAdvantage miles

i don't forsee any significant changes if we go to war.

i also agree that the politics don't belong in this forum.

I'm told that someone called up BA reservations in '91 and asked "What time does Concorde leave for New York?"

The reply - "what time do you want it to leave?"

Being more serious, people seem quite happy to re-discover technology whenever things get a little hairy (video conferencing etc - think post 9.11). I saw no changes in security 12 years back, just quieter flights, lower fares and I guess more cancellations.

IMHO, If people stop travelling in the same way now that they did in '91, given how fares can't really go any lower, it's going to be the end for a number of airlines, especially in Europe as governments can't pump cash/secured loans/whatever into them as is being done in the US....

Any changes will probably affect our personal freedoms a lot more than our travel plans.
Mr bush is not a dummy. Although he may be controlled by a ventrilloquist! Give the guy a break! Mr bush is just like any evil dictator, trying to do the best he can for the billionaires he serves.
As for clinton, he did not 'give' us 9/11, We bought it from him, paid for with our own apathy. it was indeed his inaction that allowed it to happen, but it was US that distracted him from his job by prying into his personal affairs(no pun intended).
Blaming one elected (?) official or another doesn't get us our constitutional rights back, or our security at the airport. Has all of this so called security caught any terrorists? no. Even the 'shoe bomber' got past all of the security and onto the plane. The only people who have been affected by the new security, is us. Bush's war on terror has so far been about as effecive as his daddy's failed war on drugs. Drugs still come into this country, and so do terrorists.
We need to pay a lot closer attention to what these politicians are doing in our name, so that we are not made into targets in the first place. This is what happens when we are affraid to debate 'political' ideas. If we want positive change, we must involve ourselves in the process of making change instead of our recent 'just-vote-then-forget-for-four-years' attitude. Who on this board has actually written to the president or to the TSA about these questions? I have.
I apologize to anyone who thinks my post is too 'political', but these are the tough questions that WE must answer if we want to have any say in what the coming changes in our community might be.

Swiss Tony wrote:
I tend to agree with Swiss Tony regarding the current state of affairs.

In April 1991, though, I took a nice vacation to France courtesy of a NWA post-war special: $345rt MSP-CDG + 3 days free Hertz rental car + 5000 bonus miles. What a sweet deal. Somehow I don't see that happening again.

That's such a ridiculous thing to say. Southwest don't fly to/from JFK. It would have to be ISP - Baghdad.

Well, George jr. is our leader, although of dubious legitimacy and too grossly inarticulate to successfully lead us anywhere, and much too venal and sleazy to deserve our following him, but to simply say that we should follow his lead, especially into his personal war, is to see Americans in the same situation as any people who have followed their leaders blindly and without a valid reason to do so. Tyrants and martinets love that sort of thing.

Well, considering the fact that the State Department has told all Americans abroad to be ready to return to the US any day now, and we're all pretty much expecting a declaration of war in the state of the union tomorrow, it seems the war is imminent.

With the State Department recommending that no Americans be abroad, I think that's probably going to put a pretty big crimp on the airlines. Particularly the majors which are getting killed domestically, but may be earning some money on some international routes. Cut those revenues out and the airlines are going to be lining up for more government cash handouts and/or bankruptcy court.

d

They think we're safer here? Im more worried about being here in San Francisco than I am in the places I plan to travel to this year.

First off, this isn't really an appropriate topic for flyertalk. Secondly, I made the mistake of reading too far down and have to respond to the above.

Within one month of taking office, George W. Bush canceled all existing executive orders dating from the Clinton administration authorizing the relevant branches of our government to hunt down Bin Laden. It seems that he was trying to work an oil pipeline deal with the Taliban for UNOCAL. Whether his father's business partnership with the Bin Laden family had anything to do with it is up to your speculation. Did you know that our installed Afghani leader Kharzai has zero credibility or respect among the Afghans and that he spent both the Soviet invasion years and the Taliban years as a London-based lobbyist for--you guessed it--UNOCAL and without the "Pretorian Guard" of Green Berets that we provide for him would have the life expectancy of a firefly.

Also, what exactly was Clinton supposed to do? Seeing as he was hounded by the Republican Senate and Congress if he so much as sneezed. Everytime he did try and put US troops in somewhere, they went all ballistic, screaming that it would be another Somalia (a situation inherited from Bush the Elder), that he was just trying to divert attention from his impeachment and so on.

And finally W. is a dummy! Look, anyone that speaks in public is going to mangle grammar and syntax. But, referring to Spanish as the "Mexican language," referring to Greeks as "the Grecians," that's just the actions of an imbecile.

[This message has been edited by csb (edited 01-27-2003).]