Why the Emphasis on Transportation?

"If Americans were more thoughtful and less gullible, they might wonder why all the emphasis on transportation when there are so many soft targets. Shopping centers, for example. If there were enough terrorists in America to justify the existence of Homeland Security, bombs would be going off round the clock in shopping malls in every state. The effect would be far more terrifying than blowing up an airliner.

Indeed, if terrorists want to attack air travelers, they never need to board an airplane. All they need to do is to join the throngs of passengers waiting to go through the TSA scanners and set off their bombs. The TSA has conveniently assembled the targets.

...

Make up your own mind. What terrifies you the most. Terrorists, who in all likelihood you will never encounter in your lifetime, or the TSA that you will encounter every time you fly and soon, according to Pistole, every time you take a train, a subway, or drive in a car or truck?" - Paul Craig Roberts

- rest at www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26902.htm


At the start of one the seasons of the TV series, "24", hitting soft targets was what was going on. I thank God that it hasn't happened here like in the TV show.

The existence of "Homeland Security" sounds like something from a George Orwell novel. It should be one of the things that is cut from the federal budget and anything that is does that is truly useful and needs to be kept should go into other agencies, such as the FBI, Department of Defense, etc.

 

From Poncho's link in this thread: www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=68783


"Terrorism has always been rare, and for all we've heard about 9/11 changing the world, it's still rare. Even 9/11 failed to kill as many people as automobiles do in the US every single month. But there's a pervasive myth that terrorism is easy. It's easy to imagine terrorist plots, both large-scale "poison the food supply" and small-scale "10 guys with guns and cars." Movies and television bolster this myth, so many people are surprised that there have been so few attacks in Western cities since 9/11. Certainly intelligence and investigation successes have made it harder, but mostly it's because terrorist attacks are actually hard. It's hard to find willing recruits, to co-ordinate plans, and to execute those plans -- and it's easy to make mistakes.

Counterterrorism is also hard, especially when we're psychologically prone to muck it up. Since 9/11, we've embarked on strategies of defending specific targets against specific tactics, overreacting to every terrorist video, stoking fear, demonizing ethnic groups, and treating the terrorists as if they were legitimate military opponents who could actually destroy a country or a way of life -- all of this plays into the hands of terrorists. We'd do much better by leveraging the inherent strengths of our modern democracies and the natural advantages we have over the terrorists: our adaptability and survivability, our international network of laws and law enforcement, and the freedoms and liberties that make our society so enviable. The way we live is open enough to make terrorists rare; we are observant enough to prevent most of the terrorist plots that exist, and indomitable enough to survive the even fewer terrorist plots that actually succeed. We don't need to pretend otherwise."

 

Plus, Salty, after 9/11/2001 passengers on planes will not just sit back and hope everything works out nor will they just sit back and let suspicious activity on a plane go unnoticed.

If terrorists are ever able again to pull off a major attack I doubt it will be using the same tactics as on 9/11/2001.