Another 9/11 Averted....This Time

I sat in horror today, watching the news reports of the terrorist plot to blow up ten planes over the Atlantic as they crossed from the Great Britain to the United States. Fortunately, British intelligence was able to infiltrate the group and stop it from happening. Twenty-four people were arrested as a result. If not for the infiltration, these terrorists would've been able to walk right onto the planes with little trouble. They were just days away from boarding planes for a test run to kill thousands of innocent civilians.

The more media coverage I watch, the more I believe that these terrorists are going to succeed eventually. It pains me to say it, but if a group of people are determined to blow up airplanes and are willing to kill themselves, they are going to be successful at some point. They were able to do it on 9/11 and they will be able to do it again.

In Israel, they constantly fight against airplane hijackings and other terrorist attempts to take over airplanes. The government has been able to stop every attempt on their commercial airline system for decades. That begs the question of how they are able to do it. Part of the reason is that Israel is a much smaller country and it is easier to manage the size of the airline industry. However, the main reason is that Israel knows exactly who is in their country and they know who is flying on their airplanes.

That is the major problem for the United States. The government has virtually no control of the borders and therefore has no idea who is on their planes. Terrorists could easily cross into the country from Mexico or Canada and bomb a domestic flight. Security at the airports is nowhere near good enough to stop it.

The attempted British terrorist plot of today also shows us that it is very easy to take an airplane down. These guys were going to make a bomb out of random liquids. The liquids they were to use could easily be disguised as common household products and brought aboard a plane. Only a small amount of explosives are needed to blow a hole in an airplane and destroy it. At 39,000 feet, it doesn't take much.

The reality is that we will not be able to stop everything. Our country is wide open and the airline industry is designed around convenience. The United States has become the #1 target in the last few years and there is little we can do about that. People want to kill us and I'm not confident that we can stop them. I hope I'm wrong.

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