Another fine episode of What Digby Said ("Security Theater")

[librechik]

"...But after 9/11, why would they use this method if they were already in the US? There are literally thousands of places where a suicide bomber could cause widespread panic here without having to go anywhere near an airport. There would be no need to smuggle anything in your underwear or your shoes --- any determined person could find enough explosives in this country to make a bomb without having to go through even one "lovepat" to get it.

Doesn't it seem logical that the danger in airplanes these days comes from overseas airports and that the greater danger for Americans is in other gathering places --- few of which can effectively be stopped through these methods? Once they instituted metal detectors and random searches and put lots of people in uniforms watching passengers closely in the boarding process at American airports, terrorists surely realized that there were better targets elsewhere.

It's not like the they haven't shown that they are creative enough to do something other than blowing up an airplane to make their point. Look at the London and Madrid subway bombings or the Mumbai operation or that horrible Chechen school hostage taking. In fact, law enforcement here in the US has caught a bunch of losers plotting non-airplane related bombings without making us get stripped searched every time more than a hundred people are gathered in the same place."

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/security-theater-flaw-in-plotline.html


Yeah! This indignity is totally unnecessary. I'm taking the train from now on, or driving.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. and as I heard on the radio this AM, It is the cargo area and freight shipping that truly

needs to be watched carefully....
Until the printer fiasco, these areas were not being watched!!!!

[soryang]

2. Indeed, lets look at the London tube bombings

WORLD BRIEFING | EUROPE; Britain: London Bombing Trial Ends Without Verdict
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: August 2, 2008

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A02EFD7123FF931A3575BC0A96E9C8B63


After more than two weeks of deliberations, a jury in Kingston, a London suburb, was dismissed Friday after failing to reach a verdict in a trial of three men accused of being accomplices in the July 7, 2005, bombings on the London transit system that killed 56 people, including four bombers. Waheed Ali, 25, Sadeer Salim, 28, and Mohammed Shakil, 32, all from the northern city of Leeds, were accused of traveling to London with two of the bombers to scout locations for the attacks. Prosecutors are thought highly likely to seek a retrial.

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Four years, 52 dead, £100m - no convictions• Police say further 7/7 charges unlikely
• Security officials say little chance of 7/7 bombing charges as three cleared

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/29/july-7-london-bomb-trial


Senior security officials conceded last night that it is likely no one will be brought to justice for the 7 July bombs that killed 52 people in London in 2005, despite their belief that more than 20 people were involved in the attacks.

The admission came shortly after the only three men to be charged in connection with the suicide bombings were acquitted yesterday.

After a £100m criminal investigation, the biggest police inquiry in modern times, the trio were cleared by a jury at Kingston crown court of helping to plan the attacks by carrying out a reconnaissance mission with two of the bombers.

The men, Waheed Ali, 25, Mohammed Shakil, 32, and Sadeer Saleem, 28, had already been tried once last year, when a jury failed to reach a verdict.

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UK tube bombings coincide with "government drill"

7 7 Ripple Effect

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8756795263359807776#

[frylock]

3. blow up a chik-fil-e in bloomington illinois..

that's how you terrorize people. a vast majority of people never even fly. you want to keep people terrified? you blow up the grocery store, the movie theatre, or the strip mall. places people go to EVERY DAMN DAY! why aren't they doing that?