BUT, Not three months later, someone almost successfully lit his shoes and blew up a plane on a London to Miami flight. Only his stupidity and lack of skills caused it to fail. So the loops were not closed. Most of the security procedures in place are to plan against 'known' forms of threat. The theme is repeated over and over again in the history of war. The crossbow in the 13th century, the horse saddle, gun-power, disease, machine guns, submarines, the atom-bomb and recently the human-guided missile. (Excellent book: Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.) Predicting and planing for unimagined threats is hopeless. Creativity will always win. But you can dissuade duplicators, eliminate the incentives, increase the disincentives and have excellent emergency handling procedures, whatever the emergency might be. Sadly only a few of these lessons, in my opinion, are being learned. Cheers, Matthew On Tuesday, September 17, 2002, at 07:22 AM, Jon Wright wrote: > On Mon, 16 Sep 2002, Gerard M Foley wrote: > >> I have seen no discussion of the wisdom of the decision to ban air >> traffic >> over the U.S. for a protracted period following the attacks of 9/11. > > In my opinion, shutting everything down on 9/11 was absolutely correct. > Keeping everything grounded for the rest of the week was stupid. > > I honestly believe that all the "enhanced" passenger screening, > additional > restrictions on what may be brought on board, and "random" searches > have > done nothing to improve security. Planes are just as safe today as they > would have been on 9/12/01 because passengers will rise up against > would-be hijackers and no pilot will ever open the cockpit door for a > hijacker again. The 9/11 gang exploited a weakness in the regimen > for dealing with air pirates. That weakness has been closed--not by > any new TSA policy but by the philosophy of the traveling public and > flight crews--so nobody is going to try that again. Any Bad Guys are > going to find a new weakness to exploit; that is where prevention ought > to be focused. Since the shutdown the week of 9/11/01 seemed to be > spent > exclusively coming up with new passenger screening techniques (closing > the barn down after the horses were already gone), I see no benefit > to having left the traveling public stranded for several days while > the air system was shutdown. > > Respectfully, > Jon > > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > Jon Wright jwright@halcyon.com voice 425-635-0338 > fax 425-844-1403 > You've got a hard lip, Herbert. http://www.spudboy.com/~jwright > Matthew M. Montano mmmontan@gapac.com 404.652.7298/604.761.6473