Rand K. Peck, captain for a major U.S. airline, sent the following email: "I just finished reading Annie Jacobsen’s article, TERROR IN THE SKIES, AGAIN? I only wish that it had been written by a reporter from The Washington Post or The New York Times. My response would have been one of shock as to how insensitive of them to dare write such a piece. After all, citizens or not, don’t these people have rights too?
But the piece was in The [Wall Street] Journal, a publication that I admire and read daily. I’m deeply bothered by the inconsistencies that I observe at TSA. I’ve observed matronly looking grandmothers, practically disrobed at security check points and five-year-old blonde boys turned inside out, while Middle Eastern males sail through undetained.
What a great way to unintentionally describe how fucked up people’s attitudes are these days.
Two things that stood out to me about the original story:
The flight attendants were passing notes to each other. She said that there were people on board “higher up than you and me watching the men.”
Approximately 10 minutes later, that same flight attendant came by with the drinks cart. She leaned over and quietly told my husband there were federal air marshals sitting all around us.
Now, from my understanding, even with 1300 sky marshals currently in service, you’re just as likely to not have the single marshal that would normally allocated to a flight as not having one, yet here we have a large number of them on a single flight.
This suggests to me that the TSA in fact went out of their way to make sure this was a safe flight by putting several agents on the plane, something that’s not common, while at the same time going out of their way not to simply detain those men because they were of a particular race in a group.
Being able to apply extra security when the situation warrants caution, yet not trampling over the freedom to travel of a people because of their race? If anything, I’m giving bonus points to the TSA for how they handled the situation after I thought about it in that light.
Of course, there’s the other possibility that the claim that there were multiple sky marshalls on a single flight is just another cry for “bullshit” on an already over the top story.
Last time we took a family vacation, my not-quite-two-year-old son was specially selected. He was taken aside, had a wand run all over him, and was frisked. He hadn’t set off the metal detector, they just pulled him out of line. Neither my wife nor myself were allowed within a few feet of him during this process.
What kind of fucked-up security is this, that would search a two year old? He’s a little young to be a radical. If they’re after me, why not search me directly? Are potential terrorists so fucked up that they would pack their kid with dangerous substances and then fly with both him and the wife? WTF?
Of course, there’s the other possibility that the claim that there were multiple sky marshalls on a single flight is just another cry for “bullshit” on an already over the top story.
My guess is that there weren’t an army of sky marshalls on the plane at all, and she either made that up, or the stewardess told her that just to shut her up. They were probably passing messages around taking wagers on how long before the sweaty faced, bulging eyed woman in row 12 would flip out. I bet that Syrian with the McDonald’s bag just stuffed it down the trash receptacle in the toilet, after finding nowhere else to put it.
Joshua- Be that as it may, that’s precisely the sort of “But Bush does something worse” bullshit that the liberal mafia gets deserved shit for. Whether Micheal Moore is dishonest is completely irrelevant.
McCullough- To borrow some of Moore’s defense ammo, all the crazy shit Coulter says is just to make you think. I see no difference between the two.
I cannot let that go. The same can easily be said of anyone who goes to a Michael Moore documentary. Both are equally shrill.[/quote]
Oh, I agree. I haven’t seen Fahrenheit and I’m not going to. Coulter says things sometimes that make sense, but she goes way overboard far more often. I wish she wouldn’t; she could make some pretty strong points and be listened to a lot more if she didn’t insist on trying to win ALL arguments on ALL points.
Hey, wait - aren’t veiled threats against the life of a sitting or former president actually against the law? I must have missed the stories about Ann being investigated and exonerated by the Secret Service. Hunh. Funny, that.
You really think that it’s rational to call everyone of an opposing political philosophy “traitors” who “hate their country”, claim the world would be better off if they were dead, and call for the murder of a president? That it’s all just “to make you think”? Because, from an outside perspective, it looks psychotic as hell. You’re welcome to bring up Moore as a counter-argument, if you want to make yourself look foolish, but I’ve never seen him make statements that extreme. He’s also not a regular guest on a national news network, a syndicated newspaper columnist, and doesn’t have his books purchased and distributed by massive, well-funded think tanks and PAC’s.
Since you have to sit through some ads to see it, here’s the best part:
Late last summer I boarded a nonstop flight from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Newark, N.J. After taking my seat, I noticed that well over a hundred of my fellow passengers looked to be Muslims! Yes, that’s the same faith adhered to by those dastardly perpetrators who knocked down our Trade Center and demolished part of the Pentagon. Not only that, but our aircraft, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, was registered and maintained by a company headquartered in a predominantly Muslim nation! What if the cargo holds had been stuffed full of anthrax or TNT by unscrupulous terrorists back in Kuala Lumpur!
Several passengers wore conservative Islamic dress – men in white dishdashas; women concealed in full black burqa. Our plane contained a Muslim prayer enclave (for possible use by terrorists preparing for the throes of martydrom), and the seatback video displayed a graphic of the qibla, showing real-time distance and heading to Mecca. En route toward New York, dozens of Muslim passengers were seen socializing and using the lavatories, in some cases blatantly ignoring the illuminated seat-belt sign!
To my relief and utter astonishment, we landed safely (and on time).
I talked to James Cullen of Anthem Artists who confirms that Nour Mehana’s large band did arrive on Northwest Flight 327. Some of them came in from Detroit, and some from Lebanon. Cullen says they never said anything about a disturbance on the flight to him, even though “I stayed in the same hotel, they were nice, they stayed right above me.” He said that they were fine musicians, put on a great show, and he would work with them again in the future.
Cullen did receive a follow-up e-mail from the Department of Homeland Security, asking him to confirm that the band had played their gig at Sycuan. He had read Jacobsen’s article and concluded that some “people are just paranoid.” A pilot himself, Cullen insisted that the patterns Jacobsen perceived wouldn’t occur to him. “We should take pride in our system. We’ve got to trust our system.” (Cullen made it clear that he opposes “this crazy Bush Iraq war sh*t,” but it is important to bear in mind that Cullen also admitted to booking Carrot Top.)
Nour Mehana (a.k.a. Noor Mehanna, or Nour Mhanna, plus various permutations of those spellings) is, in fact, Syrian. He performs both “new-agey” hits and old sentimental Middle Eastern classics in a style called Tarab. In this catchy ten-minute video of Mehana on stage, (scroll down; the name is rendered Noor Mhanan this time ) you can see he has a rather large backup band helping him out. (The resolution is low, but Jacobsen might recognize some of the band members Mehanna is interacting with.) Followers of news from Iraq may have heard about the U.S. tour of the “Iraqi Elvis.” Well, Mehana comes across not as an angry jihadi, but rather more like the Syrian Wayne Newton.
