I read through the letters and this is more of a response to the points raised in them rather than the article.

*Many folks suggest that passengers will be the ones to first respond to another uprising/hijacking. Funny that the air marshalls were the only ones to respond. I think this says they were the only ones prepared to respond to a threat.

*And he was a threat. Shooting him was deliberate, not a mistake, and the right choice at the time. The local news led with the statement “An airline passenger shot in Florida even though he had no known ties to any terrorist organization”. That information wasn’t readily available in the 7 seconds leading up to the shooting.

*Mental illness is not an excuse, in fact it's not even relevant to the situation of an agitated, screaming man reaching into a bag. I'll tolerate mental illness as long as people can behave themselves in public. Once a threat, a subject must be contained/ neutralized. To quote an airline attendant "Slip the metal tab into the buckle. If you need assistance buckling your seatbelt, then you should not be left alone in public."

*Explosives are more of a threat than pointy objects. Airline security will not be complete until there is thorough gas chromatography / mass spec screening of all passengers and luggage. Philly already has a bunch of Thermo units at the US Air security check-in, but they seem to have stopped using them over the past year.

*I don’t buy the Spanish accent, brown skin, I’m-being-profiled woe. Crazy people come in all colors. Thick accents can be hard to understand, but this man’s actions said more than his words.

I think the air marshalls did their jobs, and I hope they have the courage to do the exact same thing should the situation repeat itself.

These were never prohibited. Used for binding bundles of paper, like manuals, technical papers, or manuscripts, all which can be carried on. It takes five seconds to un-bind the stack and isolate the metal prong fastener. They come ready-made with pointy edges for threading through the punched-holes, and are more than a foot long and quite malleable, for customizing the hilt and blade to the desired width, length, and strength for plunging or slashing.

I fail to see the big deal about scissors if metal prong fasteners have always been okay. And no I'm not concerned about the Terrorist Watch-List. I signed up three years ago.

The sad thing is that none if this is necessary. Rigoberto Alpizar's death was unnecessary. Trigger happy air marshals are unnecessary. All the loss of privacy and freedoms since 9/11 are totally unnecessary.

The "War on Terror" is perhaps the biggest fraud ever sold to a gullible and fearful population in world history. Americans need to wake up out of their stupor of fear and understand the truth about this so-called "War on Terror": It was a massive fraud sold to the American people by a group of neo-cons bent on turning America fascist and taking over the middle eastern oil fields, while profiting massively at every level and at every step of the way.

While not politically correct to discuss the truth about 9/11 - the fact that it was the Bush Administration along with the collaboration of certain entities in New York City that made 9/11 possible and successful, rather than sharp objects or a cave-dwelling rich islamic fanatic on a dialisis machine in Afghanistan - it is nevertheless crucial that we come to terms with it if we hope to ever get ourselves out of this unfolding nightmare of an America turned fascist and an empire out of control.

The blue print for the War on Terror and the ensuing invasions of middle eastern oil-producing countries was spelled out in the Neo-Con's document, "Rebuilding America's Defenses", published a year before 9/11 before they even took office. This was their primary document put out by their organization they formed in 1997 called, "Project for a New American Century". In this document, they essentially stated that Americans would not go along with this agenda unless there was a, "catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor" (page 51).

If you can't get your mind around the possibility that our own goverment would pull off something like 9/11, consider all the ways they benifited by 9/11, and everything else they got away with:

1) Blatent lies and deceit over the pretext for the Iraq war, and the running of the war.

2) The systematic use of kidnapping, torture, and forced confessions by the CIA and US military.

3) Shredding of the Bill of Rights and Due Process with the Patriot Act and the conduct of the War on Terror

4) Massive profiteering and corruption in the Iraq War, with Chaney's Haliburton and other well connected contracting companies operating in Iraq and the bloated Military Budget that increased 50% since 9/11

5) Massive documented election fraud, in 2000 and especially in 2004 with the use of electronic voting machines that manipulated milions of votes in Bush's favor.

6)Character assasination and harassment of anyone who leaves the Bush Administraion because of disagreements with their policies, like Jo Wilson, Paul Oneil, etc.

If these policies are not the hallmark of fascism, that what are they?

Cave-dwelling fanatics with sharp objects were not responsible for the stand down of the North American Air Defense on the morning of 9/11, nor for the controlled demolition of 6 World Trade Center Buildings, including 4 that weren't even hit by planes. Before 9/11, the Air Force typically intercepted about 100 aircraft every year and typically within 10 to 15 minutes of an aircraft going off course or losing communication. It is well documented that standard proceedures were suspended on that morning of 9/11 by Donald Rumsfeld and that not a single one of the 4 hijacked planes were intercepted, even though the Air Force had anywhere from 20 minutes to to an hour and a half to intercept the various planes.

Educate yourselves. Read David Griffin's book, "The New Pearl Harbor", and Michael Rupert's, "Crossing the Rubicon". Until Americans are ready to face some painful truths, we will continue to slide into the gathering inferno of fascism, global war, and environmental meltdown. We all have a choice to make at this critical point in world history. What is your choice going to be? Are you going to be a Good German and not stray beyond what is politically correct to talk about, or are you going to begin taking steps to save our country and the world from these depraved fascist fanatics?