If you can plan a wedding, you can plan a terrorist attack.

[IdaBriggs]

And NO, I am NOT advocating on behalf of terrorism!

I am just sick of pretending the people who do this stuff are brain surgeons. They weren't. Neither is Osama. They come up with simple plans, and then implement them.

Let's take September 11th. Step 1: Find twenty people willing to die for their cause. (We have 150,000 in the middle east at the moment, so Americans needn't bother pretending this is a difficult thing to do -- people are ALWAYS willing to die for something.) Step 2: Pick target. (Look! A very TALL building!) Step 3: Learn to fly a plane. (This involves opening the yellow pages, so we may have been able to stop them at this point, but we missed the chance. Damn!) Step 4: Buy plane tickets. (Drat! Another missed opportunity! Maybe more obnoxious "hold" music would have stopped them!) And then Step 5: Smuggle weapons onto planes. Who would have thought of that? Oh, wait a minute! Somebody did, and that's why we walk through those funny metal detector thingys. Huh.

I hate to point this out, but NONE of these steps was difficult. Steps 6 and 7 involved taking over the plane and then aiming at the buildings, but honestly, most of the tough work had already been done. All that was needed at the end was a willingness to kill people...sigh.

And then we have the Oklahoma bombing. Now there was the work of a mad genius if ever I heard of one! Pick target, rent truck, buy fertilizer, park truck, walk away. If only someone had noticed him capering like a madman singing an evil song before it happened! Except he never did that.

Would be terrorists don't even need to come up with their own fool proof plans; they can go to the video store and rent movies that can substitute as "how to" guides for evil deeds. Invite a couple of friends, pay for their popcorn, indulge in a good old-fashioned "yeah, but" analysis of the movie and BINGO! As long as Arnold, Bruce, or some cop with only a few days left on the force doesn't show up, you are GOLD!

I'm not trying to scare people here. I'm pointing out the unspeakably obvious. People can do ANYTHING if they are angry, frustrated and really pissed off, and there is no way on God's green earth the rest of us are ever going to be able to stop SOMEONE from killing people, but we obviously need to try. Even if and/or when we understand the motivation behind mass murder (AND DON'T TRY TO TELL ME "They hate our freedom!" BECAUSE THAT IS A CROCK!), the reality brick here is we may not be able to stop it all of the time. We can implement common sense precautions and then PAY ATTENTION to them (see: metal detectors), we can try NOT to piss off the rest of the planet, we can give our law enforcement officials as much support as possible, we can keep ourselves alert to "suspicious" behavior, and finally, we can LISTEN to the injustices people are complaining about BEFORE they get so unbelievably annoyed they hit the "Forget it; let God sort them out" point, but these things ("terrorist attacks") are still going to happen sometimes.

Our best bet is to limit the pool of possibilities, and one option involves solving the problems in the middle east with some SENSIBLE policies. Got a problem with Israel keeping their promises? Cut off the money. Arafat not doing his part? Well, I don't know him well enough to come up with a solution, but someone out there probably does. Either way, addressing these problems would make life a lot easier on the rest of us. After all, if we eliminate those with legitimate unheard grievances from the equation, we only have to deal with the mentally ill who hear voices, and hopefully, they won't be able to stand the "hold" music.

End Rant.

[trof]

1. "Step 3: Learn to fly a plane."

I still wonder why they bothered with a flight school, except that I guess it was so easy to get into one.

Based on personal experience, I think anyone of average intelligence could learn to fly using a decent computer, a joystick or yoke, and a flight simulator program.

By "fly", I mean aim. Not necessarily take off and land.

[IdaBriggs]

3. Maybe they didn't know...

...how easy it is to fly one? I certainly don't. Granted, I've seen the films where the control tower "talks" a neophyte down, but I've always assumed it was simply a plot device. I'm not sure how difficult aiming a plane is -- it LOOKS complicated...?

[trof]

5. Well you need decent motor skills, eye-hand coordination.

I was a pilot, military and commercial, for over 35 years.
Using a self-teach program and your computer, it wouldn't take too long to master gentle turns, climbs and descents, and straight-and-level. That's about all you need to fly into a building, once someone else has taken off and you've taken over the cockpit.

I'm guessing you could even find the cockpit layout on the web for the particular model of airplane you were planning on hijacking.

[niceperson]

7. I wouldn't have known which buttons to press in a jet

Besides, they had the money to go to flight school, they probably wanted to make sure it was done right. Also they would need to know how to use navigation tools. Not all the planes were near their targets when the hijackers took over.

[displacedtexan]

2. The flight schools and the airlines were our weakest links...

Profit was more important than national security for both of those businesses.

Americans have always assumed that others are watching out for them. After all, we have a few regulations left, don't we?

The big surprise to most Americans on 9/11 was that no one with any power had their backs: the few vigilant FBI agents had been silenced by the Republicans at the top; the INS had begun selling fast track visas in order to make Republicans more popular with minorities (2002 election strategy); and Republican abuse of racial profiling (If it's a Mexican on I-55 between Chicago and Texas, it must be a drug dealer) had backfired big time, which meant that a rational response to the many terror warnings prior to 9/11 was impossible.

I'm just rambling here...
Does anyone else feel like his/her brain has been thoroughly scrambled by the rightwing spin machine?

[IdaBriggs]

4. Sometimes, yes. (I think my brain is scrambled by RW spin.)

And sometimes I think "they (someone in the government) had to know" because, come on! If they (the terrorists) had really wanted to kill George they would have gone on-line to the "where is he at" schedule on the white house web page (or on www.abcnews.com "The Note") and checked to see if he was going to be in town. What's the point of hitting the White House if no one is home? Part of me is wondering if ol' George knew about the concept in advance, and then got the crap scared out of him when he realized his minders could very easily take him out of the picture if he didn't do as he was told -- and no one would ever know....

But that's my paranoid side talking, so I try to ignore it. :)

[niceperson]

6. well said