Ann Coulter Finally Speaks Some Truth... I Am Shocked

Ann Coulter - Terrorists Win: Deodorant Banned from Airplanes

Last week, British authorities arrested 24 members of a terrorist cell plotting to blow up about a dozen U.S.-bound planes simultaneously. As a result of those arrests, we learned:

1. Nothing being done by airport security since 9/11 would prevent a bomb from being brought onto an airplane; and

2. This terrorist plot -- like all other terrorist plots -- was stopped by ethnic profiling.

I was bowled over when I read this Ann Coulter article. She actually made a statement that was right on the money. She didn't state it in her usually outrageous, acrimonious manner, but made some actual sense. Maybe she has a brain after all!

Last week marked the first official admission that everything government airport screeners have been doing until now is completely pointless -- unless you're an airport security guard with a thing for women's undergarments, in which case it's been highly effective.

It's interesting that the ultraconservatives are just catching on to this reality. I've been saying these "truths" since way before the events of 9-11. In fact, after the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, I wrote articles and letters urging people in the facilities management, disaster recovery and business continuity business fields to pay attention to the prevention of terrorist attacks and biohazards in commercial buildings. But, overall, the nation recovered from the shock and awe of the bombing in the underground parking areas of the Towers, and then we were lulled into a sleep.

There have been articles and conferences on airport security going back to the increased incidence of hijackings back in the 1970s, but we did not put any real efforts into beefing up airport security, chemical detection systems as part of the screening process for airport terminals and baggage, and essentially trusted the odds that terrorism would remain far removed from our reality. The events of 9-11 awakened us from the sleep, but has not been the impetus to really respond to transportation security. Our ports, airports, planes, highways, trucks, ships and event the US Mail remain largely open to terrorist action... and forcing airline passengers to throw away liquids in their carry-on luggage is not an effective preventative measure.

At least Ann Coulter got that right...

As we now know, all the ingredients necessary to blow up an airplane can be carried in small liquid containers. Airport security has not even been looking for small liquid containers. Judging from my personal experience, they seem to have been focusing on finding explosive devices inside women's brassieres.

While I think Coulter is a bit more interested in having her underwear searched than she ought to be, she has made a point. Nothing we are doing via the TSA screeners is effective. But she essentially incorrect in assuming that "small liquid containers" can be used for sneaking a bomb onboard a plane. Unless the terrorists were able to get their hands on a binomial explosive of military grade, the liquid components needed to make a bomb effective enough to blow a plane out of the sky would require a larger amount than is ordinarily found in a toothpaste tube, a bottle of after shave, or in a roll-on deodorant.

Additionally, one of the liquids that worried the British officials was a form of hydrogen peroxide. Well, I do not know many airline passengers that regularly carry peroxide in their carry-ons. Another chemical that they were concerned with was acetone. Many women that use nail polish are likely to carry some form of acetone in the nature of a nail polish remover. However, the amount of acetone needed to create a "real bomb" could not be carried in a small bottle in a carry-on. Even a pipe bomb made of nitrates, like those used in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, would require a much larger quantity than can be carried in small bottles.

Surely some form of explosive could be created with small amounts, but nothing of a nature that could bring down a commercial passenger plane if exploded in the passenger compartments. Of course, if a small bomb could be strategically placed near a fuel supply (like in the baggage compartments near the wings), then there would be a possibility of bringing down a jetliner.

After five years of submissively complying with bag checks, shoe checks and underwire bra checks, Americans have now been informed that the hell we've been going through at the airports (but which the president and members of Congress do not go through because they refuse to fly commercial air) has been a useless Kabuki theater.

The procedures that have wasted millions of hours of time cannot keep the most basic bomb materials off an airplane. This is like locking your windows to prevent burglaries, while leaving the front door wide open.

Amen, Sister Coulter! Our security efforts have been all for show and blow. Nothing done by the TSA at the ticket counter, the metal detectors or the screening center have prevented a single terrorist attack... despite what the Bush gang might think.

Airport security has been using metal detectors to confiscate sharp objects that could be turned into make-shift weapons, which could then be used by terrorists to commandeer control of a plane and fly it into a building.

The effort to take away nail files from women, nail clippers from frequent travelers, and pocket knives from hillbillies that have carried a "jack knife" in their back pocket most of their lives was not only stupid, but in effective... and annoying.

Except the terrorists can't do that because we've seen that trick before.

After 9/11, airline passengers will never allow a half-dozen terrorists to take control of a plane again. Indeed, on 9/11, passengers on Flight 93 prevented terrorists who had already been given control of the plane from flying it into a building after hearing what had happened to the first three hijacked planes.

To pull off a 9/11-style attack now, literally half the passengers on the plane would have to be terrorists. (At least the airport screeners wouldn't have to worry about confiscating a lot of deodorants.)

Well, I knew Coulter couldn't write a piece without offending someone... But she is correct regarding the nature of flying since the events of 9-11.

I think a planeful of Arabs would attract attention -- except from people who had recently completed a government training program teaching them not to notice anyone's appearance. Not even a group of liberal Democrats flying off to a Renaissance Weekend would stand for that.

Of course, Coulter is now playing to her audience of ultra-conservative ignorami, so she has to get her digs in on liberals, Arabs and the government.

The sole objective of airport security post-9/11 has been to accomplish the impossible -- remove all sharp objects from a plane -- in order to prevent an attack that won't ever happen again. (OK -- well, that and finding out what color of lingerie Ann Coulter prefers.)

You know, if Ann needs to get her jollies and have her world rocked from some "monkey sex," she should probably be a little more direct. Most sexual partners do not have the underwear fetish she seems to have.

The plan seems to be to make flying so unpleasant that terrorists -- like the people who write laws about airport security -- will refuse to fly commercial air. On that theory, we could also keep terrorists off planes by forcing passengers to undergo root canal surgery before boarding, making them stand on their heads for an hour, or enacting an "all Whoopi Goldberg in-flight movie" policy.

Hey, I like Whoopi Goldberg!

What stopped last week's terrorist attack was ethnic profiling. We don't know the details of the British intelligence work that nabbed the 24 Muslims because The New York Times has not been able to obtain that classified information and publish it on its front page yet. But it is a fact that you could not catch 24 Muslim terrorists by surveilling everyone in Britain equally.

Without the ethnic profiling going on outside of airports, no security procedure currently permissible inside airports would have prevented a terrorist attack that would have left thousands dead.

AAAAAAAAAAGHGHHHH! Thanks for playing Ms. Coulter, but you have just made a major statement of inaccuracy. What brought the British authorities to make the arrests had nothing to do with racial or ethnic profiling, but genuine human intelligence, cooperation among international governments, and good old fashioned police investigation procedures... and there is evidence that even then they got some of it wrong! There is emerging evidence that at least a third of those arrested are not connected to a terrorist plot in any way. So, if there was any ethnic profiling, it came at the end of the process and is probably responsible for the errors now being reported.

Airplanes, ports, bridges, subways and shopping malls cannot ever be sanitized against every type of attack that can be dreamed up by fanatics engaged in asymmetrical warfare. We have to target the fanatics themselves. Baby formula doesn't kill people. Islamic fascists kill people.

Extremists of all flavors kill people, not just Islamic fascists. Ms. Coulter needs to take a course on the history of authoritarianism... it has come in at least a hundred different flavors, including that which we are witnessing in the White House these days.... And the Bush gang are responsible for the death and injury of thousands.... Just ask the troops that have not had proper armor supplied to them in combat.