If liquids are outlawed then only outlaws will have liquids
On the way in there was a bag check and a quick hand-frisk without metal detectors. They checked above the waist only, in a way that made me think they were looking for suicide-bomber vests. That's a first for me. I don't think a lot of the other people made the connection. At the time I didn't yet know about the latest foiled airline-bombing plot.
In a way it's comforting to learn that, nearly five years after 9/11, Al Qaeda is still pursuing that tired old "blow up multiple transcontinental flights" scheme first hatched by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the early 1990s. Because while that basic plan would be horrific if executed, it doesn't represent the kind of escalation to 24-like scenarios that has been the biggest concern with Al Qaeda. If this is what they have been working on for the last few years, that's reassuring. It suggests they are more Shyamalan than Spielberg in their approach and talents. It suggest that inability to think outside the box is not the unique province of antiterror planners but is a human affliction from which even zealots are not immune.
The dimensions of the liquids-bombing plot trace some limits to Al Qaeda's capabilities, resources and reach. If Al Qaeda had the ability to deliver a dirty bomb in a cargo container, or poison the supply of raisin bran, I think they would be doing that instead of still messing around at airports, which have become pretty secure places in the last half-decade. If, as it appears, this plot was something they've put a lot of resources into, it should be interesting to see who they had lined up to execute the plan. Because if they had a reservoir of blonde, blue-eyed grandmotherly bombers to draw on (as the profiling-is-counterproductive argument goes), you'd expect them to use those at some point, like in a huge transatlantic bomb plot. Those grannies, if any, would be a wasting asset, and they wouldn't be getting any younger. If the liquids-bombers were all to have been Arab men between the ages of 20 and 40, it suggests that blonde grannies might not be a weapon in the Al Qaeda arsenal.
But while the continued emphasis on bombing airliners is comforting for the limitations it reveals, this plot and the official response suggest that both sides believe there's nothing wrong with the basic plan, from a risk-reward perspective and even, still, from an execution perspective. As the New York Times reports today, "[a]viation experts have long known that planes could be vulnerable to explosive devices put together on board or from hazardous liquids." No doubt "aviation experts" and others know all kinds of other disquieting things, just as they knew jetliners could be used as missiles long before most of us awoke to the reality of that. And if the goal is to keep passengers from bringing liquids on board that are test-swab-negative, it will be hard to prevent determined efforts to do that except by banning hand luggage entirely. Obviously, liquids can be concealed in most of the ways people used to worry about plastic explosives being concealed. It's easy to imagine a normal-seeming carry-on bag constructed with a thin bladder between layers of fabric, for example. And if it's possible to mix two liquids that don't separately trigger explosive sniffers, a clever bomber could construct a binary device that would do the mixing automatically within a piece of checked luggage.
posted at 9:14 AM
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