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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (9128)	10/7/2001 9:28:38 PM
From: kodiak_bull	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 23153

Since it's the weekend, let me waste some bandwidth. I just don't understand what the national guard is doing at the airports except putting a little wear and tear on their uniforms, mostly soles of the shoes and seat of the pants. Our airplane security issues are solely concerned with after takeoff and before landing (or crashing). It eludes me how having Joe Blow, a computer programmer from Dallas, on "active" duty at the Houston Airport. It strikes me it is a feelgood measure at best, and a waste of time and money at worst. As for I.D.'s, they would allow us to track people, especially foreign students, grocery clerks etc. so that once they enter the country at LAX the government has some clue where they are. If a guy is a gardener in south Florida then maybe multiple trips to Europe, Canada, a rental car to Las Vegas and then appearing on a passenger manifest where 200 of the 250 tickets are no shows, and the 50 passengers contain an unusually high number of non greencard Yemenis, Egyptians, Saudis (say 10%), then the FBI might have enough pieces of the puzzle to call the plane back from the tarmac. As for matching luggage, I don't recall any of the checked baggage having anything to do with 9/11. I do know that if you don't fly on a plane, then neither does your luggage (unless the airline left it behind and has to send it on the next flight). I don't think my two or three modest proposals will stop all terrorism in the U.S. (no effect, for example, on Tim McVeigh), but they will make us about 99% safer, imho, and have the added benefit of helping the FBI/INS/DEA follow and find a huge number of the other terrorists who have been operating with a free hand in the U.S., the social terrorists--the drug dealing networks.