At 03:52 AM 7/26/2004, ken wrote:

Assuming its true (*) the one security breach is the action of the cabin crew member who tried to reassure this woman by going on about air marshalls. That security breach should certainly get them sacked, and probably interrogated by the men in cheap suits. Or does she assume that apparently nervous middle-aged middle-class white women can't be bombers?

The flight attendant didn't identify which six people were air marshals, and since the normal number of them ranges from zero to two per flight, she was almost certainly just lying to calm down the troublesome passenger (who definitely had no class, middle or otherwise.) One of the entertaining followup items from this event was that, yes, the group of ~14 Syrian musicians were really just musicians on tour, but in fact their visas had expired about 3 weeks earlier, though the TSA thugs who interrogated them after they arrived didn't notice it. I was surprised they were musicians - I'd expected them to have been a soccer team, and I've been on enough airplanes with sports teams on them that their behavior sounds totally typical. And Middle Easterners flying out of Detroit? What a surprise! (Detroit's one of the main places that Arab immigrants move.) Anne Jacobsen, prejudiced white columnist, wrote

What I experienced during that flight has caused me to question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats.

And she's obviously in favor of "protection", whether or not it takes a police state to do it.