The Friendly Skies?

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
21

[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
rainjack wrote:
Marmadogg wrote:
rainjack wrote:
Airports are the easiest places to breach security.

Our ports are the easiest to breach security.

But there is no “terror factor” in hitting a port.

Airports are easily accessible anywhere in the world. Ports not so much

WTF?

Just because you are a little land locked does not forgive this blatanly false statement.

I have live withing 10 miles of the Pacific or Atlantic oceans my entire life and ports are huge and an extreme liability.

I hope that I never have to say I told you so.[/quote]

Ports are a legitimate target, from an economic point of view. Closing the Port of Los Angeles for even a couple of days would have a significant impact on the economy. The terror factor would come from the days and days of 24 hour news coverage, news stories of buisnesses closing, profiles of the victims, ect. When the port workers went on strike at the Port of LA for a couple days last year (or was it 2004) it caused some pretty severe economic troubles.

22

[quote]Wreckless wrote:
orion wrote:
Can anyone explain to me why they still go for airplanes?

Not that I think that airplanes are that secure, but you could do at least as much damage in other locations that are even less defended, with much less effort.

However, on a playing field with a gazillion targets the airports are defended and the terrorists keep attacking those.

What is this, nostalgia?

Good point.[/quote]

Several reasons.

First of all people just seem to have some deep down fear about crashing planes, don’t know why, its just there.

Secondly, its a confined space, if you do manage to get the bomb to go off, you are guaranteed casualties.

Thirdly, collateral damage if done over a city can be pretty huge.

And lastly, we’ve dumped all this damn money into making airports secure, so what better way to freak us the fuck out than to blow up some more planes?

23

[quote]Ren wrote:
Air Accident (The Entire world - pop. est 6,630,000,000)
2001 - 1,752 Fatalities (incl. 9/11 passengers)

Accidental Falls (The UK alone - pop. est 60,441,000)
2000 - 4,281 Fatalities

Flying is safe.[/quote]

On a per-mile basis, flying is over 100 times less likely to get you killed than walking. Of course, people don’t regularly walk thousands of miles.

24

[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
WTF?

Just because you are a little land locked does not forgive this blatanly false statement.

I have live withing 10 miles of the Pacific or Atlantic oceans my entire life and ports are huge and an extreme liability.

I hope that I never have to say I told you so.[/quote]

I am not saying ports are a bad target.

The question was raised as to why terrorists keep targeting airlines. It has been proven that they attack a multitude of targets from Naval ships to subways to airplanes to nightclubs.

My answer to the question was that the terrorists don’t attack strategic targets. They go for the whizz-bang affect.

Putting it into gym vernacular - they want big arms and do curls when they should be drinking milk and doing squats.

This is not to say that they won’t hit a strategic target at some point. I think it is only a matter of time before you get your wish and one of our ports is obliterated with a suitcase nuclear device.

25

Ports are an excellent strategic target - I’m sure they would’ve attacked our ports too if they really wanted to crush our economy.

then again, if they REALLY wanted to crush the economy, they could’ve just attacked Truck stops on long stretches of highway, and malls a week before Christmas. They wouldn’t even have to KILL that many people - just blowing up a trash can or a single store would probably scare most people into shopping online.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again - they want ATTENTION. Fear is only part of their goal.

26

C’mon, guys: everyone knows this was a conspiracy by Walgreens/CVS/Rite-Aid to get people to buy more toiletries.

27

There’s a wide spectrum of methods available to combatants but the actual choice is determined by their resources relative to those of their enemy. On the one extreme you have pure terrorism and on the other your have old fashioned conventional war like WWII. Guerilla warfare occupies the space in between. Looking at the cheap end of the spectrum occupied by al Qaeda the limited resources they possess make economic and strategic attacks quite wasteful.

Assume they get a couple dozen operatives a year into the US. Even if they manage several major infrastructure strikes in a year- which is a stretch considering that major economic infrastructure targets tend to be physically robust at very least and would likely require a great deal of preparation- the overall effect on the US economy would be minor.

With the same miniscule resources they can have a much greater economic and most importantly political effect through purely terroristic means. War is about convincing your opponent that the benefits of a course of action aren’t worth the costs. In a democratic society which by definition has power spread quite broadly, the costs need similarly to be spread broadly.

Since terrorists don’t have the means to spread costs broadly through the economy or infrastructure, the best they can do is to utilize the irrational fears of people who think al Qaeda may attack them in rural Iowa before their lard-clogged heart does.

Like many of you I’m puzzled at this point why they decided to do planes again. The big simultaneous death toll and the demonstration of our powerlessness to stop them in spite of jacked up security weighs in favor, but on the other hand confining the danger to international travelers isn’t the most efficient way of getting everyone’s attention.

If I were Osama I would send individual suicide bombers into the widest array of different places at once. Hit a mall in California, a few Wal-marts in middle America, you know, spread it out. The randomness and lack of focus is what really gets people worried about themselves. As the diddy on the California lottery says “Is it you? Is it me? Who’s next?” I think the choice of airliners again was about ego.

28

[quote]harris447 wrote:
C’mon, guys: everyone knows this was a conspiracy by Walgreens/CVS/Rite-Aid to get people to buy more toiletries.[/quote]

See - I was thinking it was a plot by Suave. I had no idea it was so far-reaching.

29

When the terrorist his a LNG ship or facility in a US port it will make the WTC pale in comparison.

30

[quote]orion wrote:
lucasa wrote:
orion wrote:

I think 9-11 was the logical conclusion of airplane highjackings that became popular in the 70s. There is little left to do there.

Go to know that you limit your creativity so. Too bad we can’t do the same to them.

There is this Alaskan pipeline that allmost falls apart on its own,

Doesn’t this sentence answer you’re own question? Why don’t they just blow up a junkyard?

there are chemical plants that cannot be made secure aginst a missile attack

So, step 1: Find a cheap, easily-manipulated, large, explosive-filled, flying object that you can move virtually anywhere in the country.

step 2: Obtain control of said object, civilian casualties are a plus.

step 3: Gain intimate knowledge of target including where to crash the plane, er, aim the missile so that the building isn’t just destroyed, but whatever hazard it contains is released. Careful planning is required as many of these facilities have containment procedures already in place.

step 4: Apply said object to target in question, maximizing civilian casualties and maximizing the idea that this could happen anywhere at any time.

what do they try again and again?

Train/subway stations? No, no, streetside cafes!? Wait, wait resort hotels! No, wait, now I’ve got it IEDs! No, no, IEDs and life rafts. No… It’ll come to me later.

oh, come on, you know as well as me that they could just poison a small towns water supply or derail a train.

…[/quote]

While it is pretty easy to take out a train poisoning a water supply takes a massive amount of poison.

It could be done but it is far more difficult than any of the other things they do.

Airplanes are the perfect target. They are packed with people. One attack or threat of attack has huge reverberations worldwide.

It only takes one lunatic with a small amount of explosives to do it.

31

For absolute security, all passengers (and especially stewardesses) will fly in the nude. Of course, even then…

:wink:

HH

32

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
For absolute security, all passengers (and especially stewardesses) will fly in the nude. Of course, even then…

:wink:

HH[/quote]

I’m genuinely surprised they haven’t figured out the heroin hole by now. It’s probably some homophobia thing. Blowing yourself up and killing a bunch of people is fine but hiding something in a stinking spot crosses the line.