If this particular technique is from the 1990 's AQ playbook

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

and attempted before,as I have been reading, why hadn't the airlines and Homeland Security taken some kind of preventive action against this technique BEFORE NOW?! Apparently, this is right out of the Al Qaida playbook. I am disgusted, really. Do they just not care? Would someone have come running up and and said, "who would think that they would use liquid explosives?".

I think this is really going to hurt air travel for a long time.

[walkon]

1. Possible headline?

Bush Administration Seeks To Eliminate Public Air Travel

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

2. I would like to see this come up at the next press conference

Mr. President, if it is known that Al Qaida planned something similar almost ten years ago, why was there not a strategy already in place for dealing with the possibility of liquid explosives on airliners?

[PATRICK]

3. Simple as a baby's formula

The airlines didn't, now can't, pay for full security.
The Bush administration does nothing except show to fight terrorism.
The administration is totally consumed in exploiting the "inevitability" of terrorism up to an including becoming a vital player in self-fulfilling prophecy.
People want to fly and settle for just about any sweet talk.
People grumble about security measures.
Security measures in place are cheaply bungled things that create fear or more likely, disgruntlement, among passengers(so that conveniently more expensive full security just HAS to be avoided!)
The news boosts airline business. Keep flying, buying, dying.
When it does take a shot at lousy airline security, that rare, oh so easy and important journalism is submerged by the MSM in general.
News coverage will always include the passenger more concerned about being stranded than his plane blowing up.
The sexy adventure story always submerges background, causes, exploitation, endangerment issues.
Fear and interest is easily diverted to the possibility of other fears, sexy plots, and support for our security forces and away from every other issue of vital importance directly connected to this event and future ones.
People who point out things like the ones posted will just be part of a background noise filled with more lies, different angry voices, and some way to twist those inconvenient truths to blaming Clinton before being stuffed back into the box.

The complex of evil likely includes all of things and more. Greed, venality, banality, lies, political exploitation, destruction of civil government. The main awesome thing, such as when all those vices combine to send millions of luckless citizens into a disastrous war(or merely distract them from the business of world wide natural crises) is the overall bending of Reason and popular will away from the truth. That great bending causes the inevitable catastrophe for the whole. In effect, we here barely tug at the sidelines as we are swept into it.