We would adjust our tactics to take into account behavior. The Israelis have a program that is supposed to be effective in detecting individuals with a hostile intent who can be questioned more closely. There is also training that is supposed to accomplish the same purpose. They both sound good to me though I trust a human detector who is doing his/her job more than an electronic one.

I am still concerned about mules. You could insert an explosive in an old person’s walker and they might never have a clue that it has been done. I have also heard of parents hiding dope in a babies diaper. Such an attempt would probably be a low probability but it could be accomplished.

Yes, it is possible that terrorists would adjust their tactics if we were to take our security seriously. But why deal with hypotheticals when we know where the threat comes from NOW. Why limit the number of men of a certain background you screen per flight — isn’t that leaving a “hole?”

I am not saying that racial/ethnic profiling is the ONLY way — there are behavioral cues and other factors that may be used. My problem is that in order to be “polite” by not targeting a “sub set” of the population, we are putting ourselves in greater danger. You talk about leaving a hole…how does it serve our interest in the preservation of innocent life when we pull aside someone, like Al Gore, who we KNOW is not a terrorist threat JUST to make it appear that we are being even-handed?

You just can’t seem to get it through your skull that more than one method may be used to assess a threat. The difference between us is that I do not want to take one common sense option completely off the table because someone’s feelings might be hurt.

You’re willing to trade lives for someone else’s hypothetical self-esteem. How’s that on the conscience?

I have seen the Middle Eastern people and a number of them could pass as Europeans especially if they decided to die their hair blond. Their accents might give away the gig but a number of the terrorist were home grown in the liquid bomb scheme and one was even a convert to Islam.

There are a number of black Muslims in the U.S. but I do not believe they are suicidal.

I would not put it past these terrorists to employ an old woman or a child if they thought it would work. They used women in bombing two planes in Russia.

Again, Kotex, you display in neon billboard lights the weakness of the Left. Despite all the evidence right in front of your face, you still deny reality, using a paper by some college kids four years ago as your backup.

And yes, it is time for profiling! Percentage of terrorists who are young male muslims: 100.

Of course if we uncover a plot by some other group, it should be pursued with great vigor. But reality is what reality is and the PC approach of stripping even Al Gore down to his pasties is a ridiculous exercise that may be just enough of a distraction to get us killed by something we shouldn’t have missed while spending so much time trying to bolster everyone’s self-esteem. One of the biggest bumbling failures in the multitude of such in the Clinton White House was to declare that the greatest threat to our security was white supremacist groups…all this while the WTC had already been bombed, Khobar towers were about to fall…and Johnny Jihads all the world were plotting our demise.

Yes, the White Trash wanna-be militia man does exist, but the threat is de minimis and isolated as compared to the threat from “Middle Eastern male Islamists between the ages 17 and 40.”