At 12:45 PM 10/14/2003, Michael A. Burris wrote: >It serves this country right. They get what they pay for. This was the >case, even pre-9/11. What we need is the type of security found at Ben >Gurion in Tel Aviv and the individual security for each carrier found at >El Al. This has been a standard complaint for many years, even since the >days of the Achille Lauro incident and TWA highjacking. Nothing will >change until then. Why do we need Ben Gurion security at all US airports? Because there were four hijackings on one day two years ago? How long had it been before that, during all those years that it was "a standard complaint"? I think the whole airport security hysteria since 9/11/2001 has been absurd. You can't make security fool-proof. Maybe you tighten it up when there's a specific threat, but the whole post-9/11 response stinks of closing the door after the horse has left, and it's not clear that the horse would have been kept around anyway. What about auto fatalities? How many more people were killed on the American roadways during 2001 than were killed in terrorist attacks? Why aren't we hardening cars and reducing speed limits so cars are at absolutely safe speeds? Because we've learned to deal with that particular set of risks, that's why. We don't want hardened cars; we want better performance and better gas mileage. We don't want speed limits so low they're absolutely safe; we want to get to the store in ten minutes, not two hours. Why are we so nutty about air transportation security? Someone suggested a week or two ago in the press that Saddam Hussein might have sent messages to his commanders authorizing them to use WMD in battle to make the USA think that Iraq had WMD. It didn't matter that none of those commanders had WMD to use; we took the threat seriously. That's what I think about exploding pillows. It might happen, but it's just as effective as a rumor as it is as a real weapon. >Workers getting less than $8.00 per hour aren't always as enthused as >those that get paid more. Low wages also attract some lousy people (U.S. >and foreign) Lots of people at low paying jobs are in some way responsible for my security. Are nurses paid enough? Cops? Mechanics? Soldiers? Snow plow operators? I'm not in favor of paying all of them slave wages, but tugging at one strand of a web of low paying jobs just pulls everything else out of whack. I'm not sure there are threats I need airport security to protect me against, let alone treats that will be prevented only if we pay all TSA screeners (or their private industry successors) more money. >Lot's of talk, but in the long run, most things stay the same. And that's been good enough, looking at all the terrorist deaths in the USA since 9/12/01. The terrorists won. They changed America. Maybe it's time we fought back and restored civil liberties and civility in general. Nick the freedom loving contrarian