Wow. This one is a doosy. I don't know what kind of crack I was smoking that made me actually skim this article - terrorism/USA Today - who cares - probably just another scare to keep the proles edgy. Guess it was at Dulles, so that made it local, therefore worthy of a skim.
Anways, here's the title and first two lines of the article:
Travelers questioned after Dulles landing
WASHINGTON (AP) Security concerns prompted the cancellation Thursday of the same British Airways flight from London that U.S. authorities had boarded the night before when it landed at Washington Dulles International Airport.
U.S. officials were acting on intelligence information and not just suspicious passenger names when they boarded a British Airways jet on New Year's Eve at Dulles, a national security official said.
This is great stuff. I have no idea what the first line means. But the second line is good. Not just suspicious passenger names. Niiiiice. Let me fill that line out a bit for the uninformed. Not just suspicious passenger names, as per usual. Wait. Let me spell it out for you completely. Not just suspicious passenger names (like Mohammed, Saddam, and Jacques), as per usual for the TSA. I love it. Is your name Mohammed? What's up, terrorist?
Now this next seems a little iffy to me - and I can't tell exactly why - b/c USA Today apparently updates their pages the way the White House likes to do - ex post facto:
In the New Year's Eve incident, investigators found no evidence of terrorism, and the major consequence appeared to be inconvenience, with the 247 passengers from London waiting more than 3.50 hours before getting off the plane while some of them were questioned.
Hmmmmm. I wonder what would be considered evidence of terrorism. Is the USA Today just really pressed for column inches and can't afford to use the appropriate English, or are we just supposed to, you know, 'get it'? If a boxcutter was found, is that evidence of terrorism? Has terrorism taken place if a boxcutter is found?
Another good one:
"It was fact-related," the official said, and not just connected to the passenger list the United States now receives from airlines flying into this country.
Niiiice. As opposed to, 'non-fact-related', or 'hunch-related', or... Too funny.
Maybe there's something to this, but I'm not so sure that terrorising presumably-innocent passengers about why they chose to leave their 'lump in the bed' at home is such a good idea. I certainly don't feel good about it.
Passenger David Litwick told WJLA-TV in Washington that he and his wife were not questioned, but at least one other passenger was. Litwick said four FBI agents spoke to a woman who appeared to be from the Middle East, repeatedly asking her why she was not traveling with her husband.
And more good news:
The threat of terrorism also prompted the closure Tuesday night of the oil tanker terminal in Valdez, Alaska. The terminal remained closed Thursday, Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Carter of the Coast Guard said.
Someone, somewhere had to do a study of the costs of America's whack foreign policy. I mean, spending a couple hundred billion dollars...BILLION dollars....might end up paying itself back to us, collectively, in terms of reduced oil prices, but somehow I doubt it. But what about the incredible gifts given by the Bush administration to all his security-company buddies? So, there is just this seemingly unimaginable amount of money being spent by the federal government of the United States of America, under George W. Bush and his GOP cronies, but let's check out the private sector. I rarely see a building in DC these days that is unmanned by one of those skulking security guards. I've read so many article of recently-graduated x-collegians who, unable to find 'real' jobs, ended up in the security business for ten bucks an hour. Of course! But that's just the obvious stuff. What about the insurance markets? Insurers are having a *field day* with this stuff.
Take a company like Marsh who specializes in 'terror' insurance. Think about the money you've already spent in increased travel costs - to airlines, trains, etc - just to pay for America's neocon foreign policy. Marsh, apparently, has some friends in the Administration.
Once you've totalled that all up, think about the cost, if one can be applied, to living the rest of your life like a Palestinian - waiting for that next deadly Israeli/U.S. rocket to blast through your living room wall and take out you and or some/most of your family. Well, we're not likely to see rockets landing on U.S. shores anytime soon, but the ridiculous meter is already sitting at a higher level than I would have ever considered possible - even granting that I knew the Bush Administration was one of the most corrupt of all time. So, I'm not willing to consider anything off the table at this point.
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