Patrick

I find the US news Media on board with this hysteria to be objective.

They dont question the Government on Terror tactics because they agree with the war,They are soft on questioning abuses because they agree the people in question deserve to be abused repeat whatever utterances this administration recites as if they are paid spokespeople find people are pissed at what happened on 9/11 and they don't want it to happen again people have been disengaged from this world for so long that they don't know what to make of who are all these players on the world stage, and now the GOP have decided to call everyone who is Muslim a fascist.Until we Americans reengage our selves into the world by reading and talking to people of different backgrounds we will forever be condemend to put up with warmongering

bulshitista like bush and Cheney. KNOWLDEGE IS POWER until you aquire KNOWLEDGE you will be powerless

You know what might help protect the airlines against attacks in the future? If we could only determine some kind of pattern around the people that threaten them. Failing that, we will have to consider everyone a suspect.

Right?

So you issue a direct call to action. Great.

What do you want us to do?

Surely you must have seen the sign as you drive on to airport property. WARNING, you are now entering a FEDERAL FACILITY under the control of the Homeland Security Department.

If you so much as blink the wrong way, or don't park between the white lines, they can drag your ass into a windowless room and stick a flashlight up your ass, hold you for at least 48 hours without habius corpus, swab your mouth, fingerprint you, mugshot you, x-ray your intestines, and who knows what else.

The last flight to Freedom took off on September 12, 2001 and it was carrying all of Bush's friends from the Bin Ladin and Al Saud clans. If you weren't on it, you ain't got no more freedom.

It's not illogical to prohibit drinks on planes even if they were purchased inside the secure perimeter. We know that the screening checkpoints are not very effective at detecting contraband being brought through. And there's no way for the gate agent to distinguish between a liquid that was improperly brought through security and one that was purchased inside the secure perimeteter.

Mr Smith's consistent attacks on the TSA would be more useful if they were more balanced. Are the policies all sensible? No. Are they completely and obviously stupid so that no one could possibly see any reason for them? No, they aren't that, either.

My 80-year-old Aunty, who just flew home to Florida from visiting family in St. Louis, thinks all the "security" is just great. She's been scared silly by the administration for five years now, and seriously believes we'll be fighting terrorists hand-to-hand in the streets one day soon. I dare say that while her views are extreme, she's not alone in her opinion. To her, every new inconvenience translates into increased safety.

She feels safer, and thus we're in the nebulous realm of emotion. No amount of logic, facts or statistics will change it.

I suspect the airlines are meekly acquiescing to all this nonsense because they understand the emotional nature of customer satisfaction, and Security Theater is designed to be a visceral experience of muscular concern for our welfare.

Meanwhile, anyone who grumbles about it is viewed with suspicion, so most beleagered travelers learn to keep their mouths shut and endure the misery.

It's clear the airlines have ignored their usual reliance on cold risk assessment in this matter. Should they succeed in getting the worst security restrictions rescinded and there followed a successful terrorist incident aloft, they'd be literally hung from the nearest control tower by an enraged public.

I wonder how the no-liquids-even-those-purchased-inside-security rule is supposed to be enforced. I’m sure a gate agent would notice if I carried on a cup of coffee, but how will he notice if I have a bottle of water in my carry-on bag? But wait -– here’s the answer –- when I sneak out my bottle and take a swig after takeoff, my fellow passengers will leap out of their seats and dismember me.

Now if we could only convince the vigilante sheep that guys yapping on cellphones when they’re not supposed to are quite probably al Qaeda operatives.

I am so tired of my timid relatives passively accepting every inconvenience where there is no evidence of a reduction the risk of terrorism. Patrick Smith's columns of the last few weeks have been a god-send.

"It's not illogical to prohibit drinks on planes even if they were purchased inside the secure perimeter.- DaviddesJ"

The policy of not allowing drinks is beyond illogical, it's downright foolish.

You cannot possibly counter every method possible of bringing explosives on a plane, while still allowing passengers.

Imagine if Reid, instead of hiding explosives in his shoe, shoved them up his anus and removed them in the bathroom! Pretty much unstoppable.

Having names of people as a list of terrorist has to be the stupidist idea in the history of aviation.

Wait, it's John Smith, he can't get on the plane, so what if this particular John Smith is 4 months old!!

Given the great ease in which people lie about their names and even ages in many third world countries, including on official documents, name list do nothing to help.

The worst part is, security is worse than it used to be. Those questions that most people considered to be silly, the has your bag left your sight, has anyone packed or asked you to carry something for them, had value. Of course anyone trying to attack the planes would lie, but that doesn't matter. The answers were not what was important, it was how they were answered. Proper security requires asking questions. What the questions are really isn't all that important, it's that you ask them and gauge how the person responds.

Nobody asks questions anymore, instead, they chase after the last act, removing shoes, no liquids.

When the terrorists leak that they will be hiding explosive in their anus, I'm not flying again. We already been and take it figuratively, the literally part is just too much to contemplate.