'Test Runs' Conducted for the Next 9/11

Bill's Comment: This article confronts probably the biggest single-issue of this election, national security. After reading this, it should be obvious that the Republicans will mop and wax the Democrats on the dance floor each and every time. Remember- The Democrats HAVE NO REAL PLAN TO SOLVE THIS ISSUE, just a bunch of smoke and mirrors from a group of acidic, far-left liberal Democratic Party snake oil salesmen.
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With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...

Thursday, July 22, 2004

'Test Runs' Conducted for the Next 9/11

Last week NewsMax linked for several days to journalist Annie Jacobsen's widely reported eyewitness account of suspicious behavior by Arab men on a flight from the Muslim haven of Detroit to L.A. But her report is just the beginning.

"Flight crews and air marshals say Middle Eastern men are staking out airports, probing security measures and conducting test runs aboard airplanes for a terrorist attack," the Washington Times revealed today.

The article singles out the flight Jacobsen took on June 29, Northwest Airlines Flight 327, as well as American Airlines Flight 1732 from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New York's JFK Airport on Feb. 15.

"No doubt these are dry runs for a terrorist attack," the Times quoted an anonymous air marshal as saying.

"It's happening, and it's a sad state of affairs," the paper quoted an anonymous pilot as saying.

Jacobsen, a business writer for the online Women's Wall Street, described how 14 Middle Eastern men alarmed and "terrified" her and other passengers as well as the crew. Seated throughout the plane, the men at first pretended to be strangers but then exchanged "unusual glances," gathered in small groups, stood throughout most of the flight, filed in and out of the lavatories and even brought a camera into one.

"One man took a McDonald's bag into the bathroom, then passed it off to another passenger upon returning to his seat. When the pilot announced the plane was cleared for landing and to fasten seat belts, seven men jumped up in unison and went to different bathrooms."

David Adams, a spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service, confirmed Jacobsen's account. He said officers who were on board checked the restrooms several times but found nothing.

"Given the facts, they had no legal basis to take an enforcement action. But there was enough of a suspicious nature for the FAMS, passengers and crew to take notice," Adams said.

Federal officials and L.A. police detained the Syrian men upon arrival, fingerprinted them and released them after checking their story that they were musicians hired to play at a casino.

Bombs in the Bathrooms

The Times noted: "A January FBI memo says suicide terrorists are plotting to hijack trans-Atlantic planes by smuggling 'ready-to-build' bomb kits past airport security, and later assembling the explosives in aircraft bathrooms."

The incident on the flight from San Juan was similar. Six Middle Eastern men pretended at first to be strangers, but it became clear they knew each other, observant stewardesses said.

The Arabs tried to videotape the takeoff, made multiple trips to the restroom and congregated in the area until crew members intervened.

A pilot reported another flight in which an air marshal broke into a lavatory that an Arab had locked himself into for a long time. The man had removed the mirror and was trying to break through the wall, on the other side of which was the cockpit, the pilot said.

Terrorists "absolutely" are testing security, he told the Times. "There is a great degree of concern in the airline industry that not only are these dry runs for a terrorist attack, but that there is absolutely no defense capabilities on a vast majority of airlines."

But Profiling Terrorists Isn't P.C.

Then why is so little being done? Political correctness and fear of pressure groups.

Only yesterday, Council on American-Islamic Relations raged that the FBI was daring to interview Muslims and Arabs in states including California, New York, Virginia and Florida "as part of an attempt to root out a possible terror attacks in the United States."

CAIR director Nihad Awad complained: "The way it's being done stigmatizes the entire community and makes Muslims objects of suspicion to their neighbors and co-workers. This is not right. This is more politics than security."

As NewsMax noted last week, an anti-terror program in Florida had to be emasculated because of grumbling from American Civil Liberties Union and Muslim groups.

The Citizen Awareness Program, proposed by a domestic security task force in Orlando, had planned to ask firemen, utility workers and other workers who go into homes to report any suspected terrorist activity. One possible sign, the program had planned to note, would be "multiple adult males living together, usually of Middle Eastern appearance and between the ages of 18 and 45, with little or no furnishings."

Scott Rost of ACLU's Orlando office claimed the program would "encourage racial profiling with little reason to believe it will make us safer."

How shocking. What in the world do groups of young Middle Eastern men have to do with terrorism? Everyone knows that 80-year-old American church ladies carried out 9/11. They're the ones who should be profiled!

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: Most Muslims are not terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslim. Anyone who ignores this reality is abetting the next 9/11.