TexasCHLforum.com

Oldgringo wrote:Airline terrorist restraints:

1. How can we fight an enemy that we can't name?

juggernaut wrote:Richard Colvin Reid hid explosives in his shoes and hundreds of millions of innocent people have been forced to remove their shoes to pass through airport security.

Now this terrorist hides explosives in his underwear.

I think I'm going to avoid flying for a long time.

A Michigan man who was aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 says he witnessed Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab trying to board the plane in Amsterdam without a passport.

Kurt Haskell of Newport, Mich., who posted an earlier comment about his experience, talked exclusively with MLive.com and confirmed he was on the flight by sending a picture of his boarding pass. He and his wife, Lori, were returning from a safari in Uganda when they boarded the NWA flight on Friday.
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While Mutallab was poorly dressed, his friend was dressed in an expensive suit, Haskell said. He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. “The guy said, 'He's from Sudan and we do this all the time.'”

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. officials say a Northwest Airlines passenger from Nigeria said he was acting on behalf of al-Qaida when he tried to blow up a flight Friday as it landed in Detroit.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., identified the suspect as Abdul Mudallad, a Nigerian. King said the flight began in Nigeria and went through Amsterdam en route to Detroit.

One of the U.S. intelligence officials said the explosive device was a mix of powder and liquid. It failed when the passenger tried to detonate it.

1. According to early reports, the suspect is 23-year-old Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, and his name "appears to be included in the government's records of terrorist suspects, according to a preliminary review." The first question, then, is how he managed to get a visa to come to the United States.
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5. If they did, was he screened specially at Schiphol? Did DHS put an air marshal on his flight?
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7. How good was the air travel screening in Nigeria?

8. If it wasn't that good, and I suspect it wasn't, in part because the plane was not bound for the US, did Schiphol fall down on the job by not properly rescreening Abdulmutallab?

9. Have we let European objections to US screening standards affect the security of flights with connecting passengers?

Smith said one passenger, sitting opposite the man, climbed over passengers, went across the aisle and tried to restrain the man. The heroic passenger appeared to have been burned.

Afterward, the suspect was taken to a front-row seat with his pants cut off and his legs burned. Multiple law enforcement officials also said the man appeared badly burned on his legs, indicating the explosive was strapped there. The components were apparently mixed in-flight and included a powdery substance, multiple law enforcement and counterterrorism officials said.

CNN's Ali Velshi on Friday stopped Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) from divulging the name of the terrorist who tried to set off a bomb as a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam began to land in Detroit.

Velshi did this claiming, "[W]e have not got any information on anyone being charged. So thank you for bringing us information. But would ask you not to name anybody on TV right now, we do not have any word of official charges."

By this time, other news outlets including the Associated Press, CBS, and Fox News had given the suspect's name, Abdul Mudallad.

Imagine that there had been a series of three incidents in which members of a [invented for present purposes] fanatical Jewish sect had attempted to bring down airliners from Arab countries.

In reporting on the latest attempt and describing the previous ones, do you think the New York Times might have mentioned the religion of the perpetrators? So do I.

But with the legerdemain required to describe a spiral staircase without using one's hands, the Gray Lady has managed in its article today to report yesterday's attempt to bring down a NWA airliner, and the earlier attempts by Richard Reid [the "shoebomber'] and the those who plotted to bring down as many as ten jets leaving the UK for the United States, without using the word "Muslim."