Sky Terror, One Last Time
Thanks to a tip from Jerseygirl, I watched the CNN/Aaron Brown interview with Annie Jacobsen last night (and I have to say, the photo which accompanied Annie's WomensWallStreet.com piece must have been from quite a while ago). Annie's take on her experience is that it was almost certainly an attack "dry run," and she says that she has "overwhelming support" regarding this conclusion from various pilots and crew members who've written to her.
"If it was a dry run, what did they learn?" Brown asked. Well, says Annie, they learned that they wouldn't get arrested, since they apparently weren't arrested, just interrogated and let go. (So, it's not necessarily illegal to glare at women while being Arab -- good to know.) They also learned "how far they could go" (to the restroom with a McDonalds sack), and "how flight attendants work" (apparently they pass out the drinks, then collect the cups). So, all in all, a very successful operation, and well worth the years spent learning to play those musical instruments. (Actually, real terrorists could have learned some interesting tips on how the airlines and the federal authorities handle various occurrences -- not from the musicians, but from Annie's articles, which include helpful info from the FAM public affairs guy.)
Annie also has a problem with how terrorists could steal metal forks and knives from a airport restaurant while on a layover, and use them to take over a plane (because those reinforced cockpit doors and a whole planeload of people are no match for three or four guys armed with forks). Aaron said he would solve the problem by making everyone use plastic forks and knives -- but I find that rather shortsighted, because you can give somebody a nasty scratch with one of those plastic knives if you use enough force.
Annie's conclusion: "The big problem I have: why are terrorists are allowed to probe?" Or, in other words, why are Arab men allowed to scare American women by getting up to use the lavatory on airplanes? I think it's definitely time for Congressional hearings on that issue.
Anyway, this evening (before I watched Aaron, but presumably after Annie's interview had been taped), the NRO ran a piece by Clinton Taylor, a lawyer/Ph.D student/college news co-director who decided to track down the Syrian musians/terorrists. He found (via Google) a casino near San Diego which advertised ethnic musical entertainment. By calling them, and then a rep for Anthem Artists, he seems to have discovered that the notorious Restroom Gang was actually the band for one Nour Mehana, the "Syrian Wayne Newton." Some of the musicians came from Syria, and some from Detroit. Taylor doesn't think they were conducting a terrorist attack dry run. Even Michelle Malkin now agrees that nothing terroristy was going on. Annie, however, said she didn't recognize any of the musicians pictured in a video of a Mehana performance, and so far doesn't seem to have recanted her "dry run" claim. (Hey, she told CNN that the guys were terrorists -- how stupid is she going to look if she changes her story now?)
While Taylor should be commended for doing what Annie (or somebody at WomenWallStreet) should have done before Jacobsen's piece was published, the piece does include some mandatory (since this in NRO we're talking about) stupidity.
But evidently no one even engaged these guys in a conversation, and no one, not the flight crew, and not the air marshals, challenged their egregious violations of protocols about congregating near restrooms or standing up in unison as the plane started its descent. Nothing was done to alleviate the terror Jacobsen, and probably a lot of the other passengers, felt.
Well, the flight attendant did tell Annie's husband that there were sky marshals who had the situation in hand -- that should have helped to tone down the dread a little (it will probably get her fired, but she was apparently trying her best to alleviate all that terror).
Here's an idea, though: once I sat next to a woman who alarmed the flight attendant by ringing the call button and saying that she needed to get off the plane. It turned out that just before she had left home to catch the flight, her doctor had informed her that her biopsy indicated she had breast cancer -- so she was just generally distraught, not actually afraid of flying. The attendant gave her three or four stiff drinks, and soon the woman was mellow and not causing anybody any trouble. Maybe they should have tried that with Annie and hubby.
Bottom line: if the men really did get up while the "seatbelts" sign was illuminated and the plane was preparing for landing, they should have been asked to return to their seats. Other than that, what would Taylor have had the air marshals do: shoot the men for glaring at Annie and scaring her? Just how far are the airlines and the authorities supposed to go to protect people against unreasonable fears?
If this had been the real thing, and the musicians had instead been terrorists, nothing was stopping them from taking control of the plane or assembling a bomb in the restroom. Given the information they were working with at the time, almost everyone should have reacted differently than they did.
Last time I flew, my friends and I could have taken over the plane or assembled a bomb in the restroom. You know, if we had brought bomb parts with us, and we had managed to smuggle weapons on board, and if the pilots let us into the cockpit, and if nobody attacked us after we announced that we were taking over the plane. And if we had been terrorists. So, Annie was right to alert everybody to the dangers posed by people, and I blame the feds for ever letting me fly in the first place.
Anyway, although now pretty much discredited, Annie has managed to be on at least a couple cable news shows, several talk radio programs, has been mentioned in the NY Times, and has become something of a hero to the whiny right. She will probably be invited to address Congress, and will end up getting a book deal out of all this. So, I figure it's time to tell MY scary air travel stories, in the hopes that I too can cash in.
1. About ten years ago I was traveling for work. One flight (an inter-European one) was on a small prop plane that held about 20 people; most of the other passengers were Arabic men wearing traditional Arabic attire. They had Saudi diplomatic passports. They all seemed to know each other, and spoke amongst themselves. In ARABIC! Instead of a ham sandwich and an apple, they were giving a snack which accorded with Islamic dietary laws. But I saw one of the men reading a Playboy on the flight. Since this violated his religious beliefs, Allah could have punished him (and everybody else) by making the plane crash. While we didn't actually have any trouble on the flight, I was really scared, if it will get me on TV.
2. A couple of years ago, there was a hail storm which damaged several planes in Denver, which meant that the plane that was supposed to take us from Chicago to Wisconsin never showed up. The airline counter people were remarkably unhelpful, but finally gave us each a voucher for $5 worth of food as encouragement to leave them alone. While eating a $5 cookie, I noticed that one of the people in the kitchen had a knife!!! (Not one of those butter knives that Annie was worried about, but a knife sharp enough to cut sandwiches with.) "Hey," I said to my sister, "we've already been through security, so if that guy gave us that knife, we could slip it on board and use it to take over the plane!" She said that he probably wouldn't give us the knife. So, I never asked him for it. But if had tried to hijack the plane, it would undoubtedly been really scary. Oh, and that bus we ended up having to take because they canceled all the flights out of Chicago was terrifying indeed!
3. Last year, while on another layover, we decided to just sit in the plane while waiting for the next leg of our journey. We noticed that the guy who came to restock the drink cart had a boy with him; the kid helped him pick up trash. "Hey," I said to my sister, "I thought that only people with airport ID were supposed to be able to get on the tarmac -- and that kid doesn't have any ID!" She said, yeah, but he's the guy's son, so they probably didn't consider him a threat. I said, "Well, some terrorists could have thrown some guns over the fence to him, and then asked him to stash them here in the magazine bin for them to pick up after they board -- and since he's just a kid, he might be too stupid to know not to do it. That's the kind of stuff that happens when people break federal regulations." And then my sister said she didn't want to travel with me anymore. That wasn't all that scary, but on the way back home, at the Vegas airport, we saw a guy yell at an old woman in a candy store because he gave her the wrong kind of fudge. That was rather upsetting.
So, if CNN wants me to discuss any of my experiences and the lessons they offer about the shabby state of airline security, they should contact me.
6:13:58 AM 
|
|
The simple fact (and one that is more plainly evident than an ACLU lawyer at a NAMBLA convention) is that France and Germany have no more loyalty to our United States than Al Gore does to sanity. Both countries can be counted on for only one thing: planning against American interests with the same energy and enthusiasm as Michael Moore set free at the opening of a new Krispy Kreme donuts! You may think those European traitors have been quiet of late – but rest assured that once Moore’s ‘Free of any factual facts 9/11’ opens here a new round of vicious anti-Americanism will be unleashed. 