Another Mad Bomber!

[lumpy]

My wife and two dogs flew from Toronto to Denver yesterday just in time before the extra security measures thanks to one crazy mulla.

I flew out of Amsterdam about a month ago and thought that this was the most stringent security inspection that I have ever gone through (not including any communist contries). If he can get through Amsterdam, it gives me the creeps what any mulla can get passed Conus inspections.

And the bleeding hearts say no to racial profilling............. ???

Lumpy

[Ka Honu]

If he can get through Amsterdam, it gives me the creeps what any mulla can get passed Conus inspections.

Remember, his travel originated in Nigeria.  When he changed planes in Amsterdam he was already inside the airport security system.

[lumpy]

I flew Hamburg-Amsterdam-Toronto
When I went to my terminal I got xrayed and searched again even though I got this in Hamburg. Before I got on the plane, the gate area was again an extra security area that contained xray machines and a machine that blew compressed air on each passenger.



Just my observations.

Lump

[Oldman]

And the bleeding hearts say no to racial profilling............. ???

I'm a white man living in an area with more Blacks then Whites. You want to explain to my good American Black neighbors as to why they on an almost monthly bases have to put up with racial profilling?

Bleeding heart??? I don't care what color /race a person is...cross the line with me and one of our wives will be sleeping with someone else in a couple of years.

Get this clear... there are good people, bad people, ugly people and people who want to kill us. Being born of a given race / color is no good reason to suffer from racial profilling.

Has the World not learned anything from what we did to the American Japanese in the Second World War?

A Bleeding Heart I'm not, but I do believe that all peoples from birth have the same privilege as I do to enjoy the same rights as those that I have. And ALL persons should be treated equally--be it scanned or not..

[Ka Honu]

While I agree with both Olds and 10.5, unfortunately there is another side to this.

If I'm charged with preventing a certain type of crime and have only constrained resources to do so, one of the things I'm going to do is try to better my odds of success by determining how I can most efficiently identify the majority of suspects likely to commit that crime.  I know I won't won't be 100% effective but I want to focus my limited assets on likely perpetrators as much as possible.  To do that, I want to identify traits and characteristics common to the majority of criminals committing that particular transgression.  I know there will be people who don't "fit the mold," but I want to narrow the field enough to have an impact.

If that crime is corporate embezzlement or trading securities based on inside information, my field of likely suspects might include employees of financial firms, their immediate families and close friends.  It would be foolish to spend much energy identifying and investigating third-grade students, parish priests, or street mimes.  One of them might commit the crime but it's not likely and would be a misuse of resources to investigate them as thoroughly as I would a group of bank VPs with unexplained extravagant lifestyles.

Logically then, if I'm trying to prevent Islamic extremists from committing terrorist acts, my focus should be on identifying common characteristics among criminals who have committed such acts and use that commonality to identify others likely to do so.  Unfortunately, in the case of extremist Islamic terrorists, the generally shared characteristics of a large majority of such criminals (not all but a high percentage) include include age, gender and ethnicity.  If I have to screen and identify possible terrorists passing through an airport on a daily basis (say O'Hare with pretty close to 200,000 pax/day), it would be poor judgment to expend many resources on elderly Swedish-American ladies taking their grandchildren from Wisconsin to a festival in Stockholm.  On the other hand, I would be derelict in my duty if I didn't carefully examine young middle-eastern Muslim men on student or tourist visas traveling from Kabul to New York.  Anna Lundgren may be a suicide bomber and Abdul Hassan may be a future economics professor but experience tells me that his group is more likely to contain militant Islamic terrorists than hers and that's where I have to concentrate.

Yes, that's profiling and it's not "right" in the way we Americans want things to be "right."  It is, however, the way we are most likely to prevent the crime given the resources we can afford to allocate to the problem. 

The problem is trying to succeed at an impossible task while doing the right thing.  It ain't "one way or the other" and it ain't easy.

[Pachanga]

I will ditto Ka Honu's well stated comments.

An interesting article on the would be bomber from Drudge Report.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/wealthy-quiet-unassuming-the-christmas-day-bomb-suspect-1851090.html

Pachanga

[lumpy]

Writing a post wen your upset is not a good idea. I should have cooled down and thought this post out carefully. If I offended anyone I appologize. Just glad that I could vent with my smoking buddies.

Ka Honu your response was well worded and to the fact.

Lumpy

[3rensho]

I flew out of Amsterdam about a month ago and thought that this was the most stringent security inspection that I have ever gone through...

The Tel Aviv to Zürich flight on El Al is the toughest I've ever gone thru.  If you arrive at 2 AM you're lucky to make a 4:30 AM flight and as far as profiles go, I am closest to Santa Claus.  I spent over an hour once explaining what the software on various CD's did - in detail.  Clearly not practical in larger airports - but it works.

Ka Honu - very well spoken indeed.

[Smokin Soon]

Very well stated Ka Honu, I do not agree with current policy's. I have never made a political statement on this forum, as it is usually not appropriate, but in this case YEAH!!