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Terrorists making dry runs in planes

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Wolfy

Banned
The thing that catches my eye is the number of people. On 9/11 there were only 4/5 guys per plane, this time around they probably expect much heavier resistance.
 

xsarien

daedsiluap
I really don't need this shit two weeks before I get on a plane. I hated flying enough before terrorists thought it'd be a keen idea to learn how to fly and/or use the things as their own, personal guided missiles.
 

Mason

Member
Women are so emotional, sheesh. :D

Just kidding; that's quite frightening actually. The more I think about it though, the more I think things like this may be more of a diversion than anything else. They're getting us thinking they're going to hit planes again when they're already working on some other form of attack. They're just using all the air marshals and other security enhancements to their advantage. I don't know, just a thought.
 

Doth Togo

Member
If some of those type of suspects were ever on my plane and tried to do something, I would not hesitate to risk my life as best I could to stop them from whatever they were doing...even if it meant I was to be killed in the process.

Building a bomb on a plane. That's fucking scary...creative as hell....scarier than all get out.
 

skip

Member
suddenly I don't want to fly to vegas next week...

what I'm wondering is why this is coming as a surprise to people, especially TSA/FAA/airlines...shouldn't we have a dedicated group of people - say in the HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT - who do nothing all day but think of ways to beat our own system, and then think of countermeasures? surely I'm not the only one who has thought of this? after 9/11, there should be NOTHING that catches us off guard.
 

skip

Member
there's also this:

http://www.donaldsensing.com/2004/07/casing-northwest-327-threat-or-hoax.html

So what did happen on Flight 327? Probably nothing more than what Dave Adams of FAMS confirmed explicitly or implicitly to Malkin: there were 14 Arab men traveling with Syrian passports. Their actions did alert the aircrew enough to contact LAX to have federal officers waiting for the plane. The Arabs, a band en route to a gig in LA, were detained, questioned and released.

That's the entire story.
 
I'm a bit of a conspiracist, but it seems a bit much for these 14 men to be so blatantly obvious and stick out, from the blaring yellow shirt to the throat cutting gesture.
 

skip

Member
maybe, but I believe federal air marshalls have the power to use lethal force in the case of an "event," who knows if cia/fbi/homeland would want to risk that on just a test.
 

xsarien

daedsiluap
Just so everyone knows, the principles mentioned in the article are what disturb me, the facts couldn't possibly be more anecdotal, the article's very structure is designed to elicit fear, and the author's own credibility is brought into question simply by using Ann Coulter as a source.

That said, I pray that the "build a bomb in mid-flight" plan doesn't ever, ever get carried out. I believe all passengers, white, brown, black, green, blue, male, female, and in-between thanks to ongoing surgery should be watched like hawks. The new face of the common terrorist is your next door neighbor, nothing on the outside can infer a person's ideology.

If I can go off-track here for a minute: A few days ago, I heard that an old friend from high school was flying home to see his family and a mutual friend we share. He's Indian, flying from one major city to another. I trust the poorly trained TSA agents either gave him hell for being brown, or just let him pass on through. There doesn't seem to be a lot of middle ground with these people, but in the end, I'd just feel comfortable if they were equally suspicious of everyone. About a year after 9/11, I was flying out of O'Hare. Security basically waved me through. This has also happened at least once at Newark International. This didn't sit well with me, I almost wanted to storm back and ask them why.

Anyone remember that scene in "Airplane!," which seems surprisingly appropriate for the time, 23 years later? Some guy walks through the metal detector with a bazooka, and some smaller armaments strapped to his person. He walks right through, Grandma, right behind him, is tackled like a monday night quarterback.
 

skip

Member
Chesapeake Silt said:
Americans are now afraid of dark-skinned people going to the bathroom and eating McDonalds on an airplane.

THANK YOU, TOM RIDGE!

it's not the action of going to the bathroom, it's the large group and the alleged circumstances. if that actually happened, it's perfectly reasonable to be spooked by it.

I mean, why would you take a mcdonald's bag with you (or any refuse for that matter) into the bathroom if you're not going to throw it away?
 
Mason said:
Women are so emotional, sheesh. :D

Just kidding; that's quite frightening actually. The more I think about it though, the more I think things like this may be more of a diversion than anything else. They're getting us thinking they're going to hit planes again when they're already working on some other form of attack. They're just using all the air marshals and other security enhancements to their advantage. I don't know, just a thought.


That's certainly possible. Then again, knowing what a huge pain in the balls it's still going to be to implement any kind of serious security in the airline industry, I wouldn't rule out another terrorist plane situation. It's probably still one of the easier acts they could commit, sadly enough.

Which is why I further believe that, unless my car gets wings......I most likely won't be flying any time in the near future.

Now.....who's ramping up work on that matter transporter?
 

Diablos

Member
How comforting.[/sarcasm]

I'm glad everyone is ok... but that's some REALLY SCARY shit. Why did he come out of the plane and say "NO"? WTF, couldn't they get it to work??

Oh man that's scary.
 

MIMIC

Banned
I was waiting for the part when she explained that Ashton Kutcher jumped out and yelled out, "You all got punk'd!"

But seriously...the 9/11 hijackers wore clothes that didn't draw attention to themselves. THESE guys that were on the plane from Detroit to LA had on some pretty eye-catching stuff, according to the article. If this were al-Qaeda, I would think they'd be trying to remain invisible.
 

xsarien

daedsiluap
It is scary, but it also defies some basic logic. If she, her husband, several passengers, and the crew were that concerned, how did not one person go into the bathroom to see what was going on in there?

There really isn't that much room in your common airplane bathroom, if you're putting a bomb together piece-by-piece, you're going to need to do the following:

1) Monopolize the bathroom, no other passengers except you and your fellow conspirators are allowed inside.

2) Have the "project," so to speak, sitting in plain sight until its completed. After all, you can't hide it anywhere until the thing's working, right?

3) Do 1 & 2 without arousing any suspicion, and a group of men who obviously know each other stopping other passengers from doing what they've gotta do is going to raise plenty of red flags, enough to possibly force the plane down early.

But, like anything, I don't think it's impossible. I hate it when I think too much...
 
Well, hrmm, don't know if that's the same thing. What I'm thinking of is a certain group leaving a piece of a bomb on board, then another group, later on, completeing the bomb..
 

ShadowRed

Banned
ZootedGranny said:
I'm a bit of a conspiracist, but it seems a bit much for these 14 men to be so blatantly obvious and stick out, from the blaring yellow shirt to the throat cutting gesture.




Exactly these guys have to be the worest terrorist ever. Suprised one of them didn't wear a shirt say," I'm with Al Queda" written on it.
 

Lil' Dice

Banned
Next time one of you guys fly, go to the bathroom, then come out and yell out" Damnit, does the watch hook up to the red wire, or the yellow wire?!"
 

sc0la

Unconfirmed Member
ShadowRed said:
Exactly these guys have to be the worest terrorist ever. Suprised one of them didn't wear a shirt say," I'm with Al Queda" written on it.
It said "I am with Osama ---->"

;)
 
I'll be perfectly honest. The idea that terrorist could put together a bomb in-flight is something that could potentially be a genuine threat and should be watched for.

However, that article seemed a bit sensationalist to me. Quoting Ann Coulter only worsened the credibility of the statements in it IMO.
 

fennec fox

ferrets ferrets ferrets ferrets FERRETS!!!
Well, it made you think about airport security either way, didn't it? In that way, the article is very successful.

Personally I don't care about veracity as much I care about the author's implicit recommendation that we start screening brown-skinned people harder, which is stupid.
 

fart

Savant
a little? she saw a group of brown men and went insane. also, half the article (especially the alleged powow with the flight attendant) is a huge load of bullshit.
 
fenekku-gitsune said:
Well, it made you think about airport security either way, didn't it? In that way, the article is very successful.

The only thing that I'm wondering is what she really saw, either how badly she interpreted what really happened, or how much she added to make for a Tom Clancy book setup.
 

Slurpy

*drowns in jizz*
After some thought, that piece just sounds like bullshit. Why wouldnt they check carry-on baggage? Everything is x-rayed last time i checked. Just sounds so phony. She probably spiced it up by adding her own crap.
 

Flynn

Member
This story is complete horseshit designed to put Americans in a state of panic and encourage votes for the most gunslinging, rights-revoking, brown-people-detaining presidential candidate thereby encouraging another four years of profits for the ultra-rich.

God. 10 years ago that would have seemed like ultra-paranoid garbage.
 

bobafett

Member
This is Bush's governement stealth marketing. If you have the population in fear you can control them more easily.

Americans should be concerned about the people that run the country right now, not terrorism. IMHO it is the number 1 priority.

Bush and his comrades can send this country to a time travel a hundred years in the past.
 

suaveric

Member
Like someone else pointed out, it's about 100 times easier for some bad guys to take out a subway system during rush hour in Chicago/New York then it is to take down a plane. Terrorists will never be able to get away with something like 9/11 again because even if all the security fails, the passangers on that plane wouldn't put up with being hijacked. All that leaves is blowing a plane out of the sky, but why bother when you can do much nastier things on the ground?
 

effzee

Member
suaveric said:
Like someone else pointed out, it's about 100 times easier for some bad guys to take out a subway system during rush hour in Chicago/New York then it is to take down a plane. Terrorists will never be able to get away with something like 9/11 again because even if all the security fails, the passangers on that plane wouldn't put up with being hijacked. All that leaves is blowing a plane out of the sky, but why bother when you can do much nastier things on the ground?


while i agree generally the panic and fear a plane exploding would leave in the public might be greater.
 

Cubsfan23

Banned
Chesapeake Silt said:
Americans are now afraid of dark-skinned people going to the bathroom and eating McDonalds on an airplane.

THANK YOU, TOM RIDGE!


*Arab guy with the thumbs up sign* Yeah man, that american Big Mac is good, come to the bathroom with me and share it 20 times. Dolt.
 

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
LOL, yeah its hyper-paranoid, but saying it's all a conspiracy to keep Bush in office is just as bad, hahahaha oh man
 
bobafett said:
This is Bush's governement stealth marketing. If you have the population in fear you can control them more easily.

Maybe. But couldn't that also have the reverse effect? Some people could be sitting on that plane (if there's any truth to the story that is) and thinking, "Hell, Bush's ideas must not be working if here I am shitting bricks on this plane when he tells me we're much safer." Or maybe it's just because I'm neither Republican nor Democrat....but I easily can see an argument for thinking either way.
 

darscot

Member
Wow are people really this paranoid? I'm getting so tired of the blatant stereo-typing of "middle eastern men". When me and about 20 friends flew to Vegas for my Stag the bathroom had a revolving door. We stood up in large groups drank like fish, talked trash and there were even a few scuffles. Damn I forgot we were mostly white guys so were ok. No one even blinked. People were probable happy we were on board nothing like a tight group of big white guys in case things get messy. The only difference between this event and my stag was the color of our skin.
 

Great King Bowser

Property of Kaz Harai
Way to make me wanna fly. I'm flying to Vietnam on the 27th, via Uzbekistan airlines, with a stop over in Uzbekistan. Nicely placed next door to Afghanistan. Then again, I really shouldn't be worrying, I don't see terrorists high-jacking a plane on the way to Middle East/Asia.

Then again making the assumption terrorists are from... bah never mind.
 
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