June 1, 2002
It's Only a Traditional Hijacking, Folks, So Just Sit Back and Enjoy the Flight
By Warren Pease
National Security Adviser Condi Rice, looking eerily like a bobble-head doll with a stretched spring, spent about 45 minutes last Thursday telling the nation that while the Bush administration had advance warning of significant terrorist activity involving hijacked airliners, they failed to recognize that these events would be "non-traditional."
Now that traditional and non-traditional hijackings have entered the national lexicon, it seems useful to examine the characteristics of each so that the flying public can decide if they're in for a stay in the Libyan desert or a date with a skyscraper.
The Traditional Hijacking: Understated but Elegant
Traditional hijackers wear leather and bandoleers. Their leaders stride slowly and purposefully up the aisle to the cockpit. Their accomplices glare threateningly at the passengers while the theme from "Shaft," arranged for bouzouki and kazoo, blares from the cabin PA.
Traditionalists have no use for box cutters. They prefer the time-honored tools of their craft: Fine automatic weapons and plastique, smuggled on board while Office of Homeland Security geniuses busied themselves jacking up 75-year-old grannies and confiscating their sewing scissors and tooth brushes.
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