COME ON NOW MR. PRESIDENT! Wayne Madsen I am the last person to defend airlines, especially considering the number of bumped flights, lost luggage, and discourteous flight attendants I've put up with over the years. However, when it comes to a feud between George W. Bush and the American Airlines pilot who refused to allow a member of the president's Secret Service personal detail to board a flight in Baltimore because something "didn't seem right with his paperwork," my vote goes to the pilot. Okay, so the Secret Service agent was an Arab American. I bet that American Airlines pilot knew a number of the American Airline pilots who died on September 11, and maybe the one who died in a still unexplained crash of Flight 587, another American Airline plane, near JFK Airport, and probably also the pilot who could have easily lost his life when Richard Reid tried to blow up his plastic explosive-laden sneakers on an American flight from Paris to Miami. Radical Arab Islamists have a penchant for hijacking and blowing up planes and they seem to have a certain predilection for American Airlines. So what did the pilot do wrong? The pilot is informed by airport security that the Secret Service guy is traveling with a gun. The pilot doesn't believe his papers are in order (I bet the Secret Service doesn't like it very much when they are on the receiving end of that missive). And here's the question I would have asked were I that pilot: Why the hell is a Secret Service agent assigned to the president traveling commercial air to the Texas ranch? What happened? Did he miss his flight on Air Force One? Too much to drink over the holidays? Yes, that pilot had a lot of reasonable questions. And considering how American Airlines seems to be the target du jour for Al Qaeda, he did the right thing in refusing him passage. So Dubya vents his spleen at that scruffy-looking Crawford ranch and says if it turns out that his Secret Service man was not allowed to fly because of his ethnicity, "that would make me mad as heck." Hey Dubya, you know what would have made me mad as heck? A passenger with possible phony Secret Service credentials steering another plane into another building. Could never happen? Well, let's see, on September 11 you ran out to hide at the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command in Nebraska because, according to William Safire quoting high-level White House officials, including head gauleiter Karl Rove, someone was able to break the code word security of White House communications and relay the message, "Air Force One is next." If someone could have done that (and every commercial pilot worth a salt knows about that incident), they could probably also obtain fake White House credentials and alter information in the Secret Service and FAA data bases. Mr. President, that pilot certainly does not deserve or require any lectures from you. If you had been a real Air Force pilot and not a weekend warrior who took back seat rides, chalking up questionable "flight time" with the senior arm of the Texas Civil Air Patrol, you might realize as does that American Airlines pilot and your "good friend" John McCain and other real pilots, that pilots are responsible for the lives of their crew and passengers. The pilot who flew you around Texas on weekends extended that protection to you. Please extend the same courtesy to our commercial airline pilots. Your Secret Service agent will get over the insult but families who lose loved ones in terrorist attacks never get over it. But here's the deal. Next time one of your more questionable-acting Secret Service agents gets into it with an airline pilot, would you personally guarantee the security of the aircraft with two armed sky marshals? From ... http://www.spiescafe.com/wm/wayne.htm and while your there,check out ... What?? Are You Serious! They could be just more conspiracy theories, but many investigative journalists are coming up with some interesting connections: 7 7 Profits of Death - Insider Trading & 9/11 7 7 The Smoking Gun 7 7 Guilty for 9/11 - Part 1 7 7 Guilty for 9/11 - Part 2 7 7 Gaping Holes in CIA-v-Bin Laden Story