Originally posted by Seagoon
Interestingly enough, Richard Reid was successfull in "walking" a pair of bomb-laden shoes onto a AA flight in December of 2001, so both the use of non-Arab muslims and the getting the bombs on board part of the plan would have worked at the time.
So after this statement above, you admit that quote:
Now since we are forbidden to act on what we know about the likely religious and ethnic profile of potential Islamic terrorists, we are forced to screen every passenger. Now because the same terrorists have attempted to use trucks, you get screened and checked instead of just the likely terrorists.
Wouldn't have worked in the case of Reid and the LA plot. That profiling would not have stopped the attempt.
My point is, if we profiled, we'd have been looking the wrong direction, we would have given ourselves a false sense of security, and we wouldn't have stopped the attempt because our adversery had already made the adjustment to his tactics.
El Al screens every passenger and has found and stopped bombing attempts because of this. From people who had no idea they were being used to transport bombs onto planes (a young jewish women being used by her "boyfriend" to carry a bomb unwittingly onto a plane. The bomb was hidden in a radio.)
We just have to decide if El Al's very lengthy process is worth the trouble. Up till now, we have decided it is not. And of course El Al's doesn't carry near the passenger load as our system does.
When I flew in and out of Sri Lanka, every passenger went through a very intense screening process as well. While I felt apprehension of the why I had to go through this process, I felt safer because of the thoroughness of the process.
