Originally posted by dd1967
My only concern is this. We are all here bacause of our love of knives. The T-Shirt wil no doubt have some reference to that fact (even if it's just the Usual Suspects' logo). This together with the fact that we are referring to the events of the last week and the fact that the planes were hijacked (as far as we know) with terrorists with knives leaves us in a situation where we may be criticised. Just my own thoughts, feel free to flame me now !
No flames at all. You are, of course, correct. Yet, that is a major part of the problem with how we deal with things over here. People would immediately key onto the "fact," that only exists in their minds, that these criminals used anything resembling something we would carry.
We have two descriptions, "boxcutters" and from Barbara Olson's cell phone call, "knife-like instruments."
She was an Attorney, I believe she was speaking very technically as an Attorney would. Had they been knives
proper, I think she would have said so.
The fact that these criminals knew they could not achieve their goals with firearms and/or explosives is a testament to how good our Airport Security is. Not that they could never do it, but that they could not get firearms and/or explosives on
reliably. They had to resort to something else.
In the hysteria, it is being forgotten, the reason they used the types of "knives" that they did is because again, they could not
reliably get a suitable folder on the plane.
In other words,
they left nothing to chance.
I watched George Bush yesterday speak about first hand accounts of passengers on one flight who spoke about a couple/few women on one flight who were tied up and had their throats cut by the terrorists. And he rightly called this "barbaric."
A fixed blade, folder, switchblade, gravity knife, whatever you or anyone else can dream up does not immediately equal barbarism. It is the murderous heart of the criminal that controls the hand, always... Always.
And we never, ever address that as a People.
They are literally confiscating nail clippers over here now. I hear that when you open your napkin on a First Class Flight, there will be a metal spoon and fork and a plastic knife. Imagine that. Imagine the empty-headed symbolism of that. You can kill someone with a metal fork (I have a picture of just that) and you can kill someone with a metal spoon. Imagine further the symbolism of a
plastic knife, that's a non-metallic knife...
We consistently, as a people, ignore the important things and focus on the easy things that are meaningless. The thought that a terrorist group who can drop $50,000.00 on two of these people to receive a Commercial Pilot Rating, that we can somehow stop them with meaningless, symbolic legislation...is so absurd that I sit here in amazement still that we would even do these things.
Yet, the vast majority of people go along with it.
The hard thing to do is to face reality. The reality of it is, these people have spent a long time establishing themselves as a part of our country, in the individual communities they lived in.
The reality is, at least one of them entered the country and then applied for a Student Visa, and the "student" part was to learn and be trained how to pilot commercial aircraft.
The hard thing is to round up all illegals, cross check the database, if they are associated with terrorist groups, hold them and try them. If they are not, you eject them from this country.
The hard thing to do is to immediately revoke all Business Visas and Student Visas, round these people up and hold them like the other group, keep the ones with the terrorist links and eject the rest.
The fact that they had to use these sorts of weapons is not a weakness, it is a testament to the strength of the system we have. And it is a testament to the fact that we have been far too kind to every sort of riff-raff entering this country.
They used our weakness against us, our kindness and generosity as a Nation. And anything meaningful used to reinforce our security would be called "racist" or "intolerant," as if someone has a "right" to a Business Visa or a Student Visa...
And so it goes...just heard on the news, they have expanded the list of banned carry-on items to include; cigarette lighters, tweezers, nail files and scissors...juice bottles and open containers of water...
I won't be flying anymore.
