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July 17, 2004

On the road again

I have been home for four weeks. Driving into the cubicle farm office. My boss needed me here for awhile, but I take off tomorrow for Hershey, Pennsylvania.
I will hopefully come back home on Thursday afternoon.

I imagine that most of you have read Annie Jacobsen's story of her recent scary flight. This story worries me a bit, I will be very cautious when flying tomorrow. I will have a plan.

I found the story via Michelle Malkin, who did a tremendous job of covering the Terror in the Skies, Again?. Michelle has really done some fact checking on this story. Despite the fact that Michelle Malkin actually spoke to a representative from the Federal Air Marshall's office and verified the facts of the case - many, many people in the blogosphere are calling Annie Jacobsen a liar, a nut case, a bigot and worse.

I have a question - if a man had written the same story, would there be so many doubters? I don't think so. Too many tend to think that we women are hysterical, and many apparently don't think we are observant enough to pay attention to what Annie saw.

What really irks me is this - bloggers don't want to believe it could happen - even if deep down they know it might be true. And, because they are afraid of not being politically correct. Come on, folks, the people who are trying to kill us are by and large Arabs. Chances are pretty good if there is another AlQuaida attack, there are going to be Arabs involved.

Then, there are those whoclaim to be such air travel experts that seeing 14 adult Syrian men on one flight behaving in the fashion these men behaved is normal, if you think of 14 teenagers on a plane - only they were not teenagers. They were not Americans - they had Syrian Passports.

And I'm not even going to link to the leftie nutcases who accuse Mrs. Jacobsen of just being paranoid and anti-Arab.

I travel more than anyone I know. I am always extremely sensitive to other people flying on the same plane I am on. I do notice odd behaviour. I have even been known to take notes when I see extremely worrisome behaviours when I'm flying from one city to another. Of course, I am trained to observe - I used to be a child abuse investigator.

I have witnessed severe security lapses at checkin points at Kansas City International Airport, at Detroit's Munincipal Airport and at Baltimore. I have called the TSA, emailed the TSA and made written complaints to the TSA about these lapses. I get a polite letter - thanks for your interest, we'll look into it, and that's it. The same women who didn't bother to check my ID against my boarding pass 2 weeks in a row was still at the Delta Gate at KCI the last time I checked.

Anyway, my point is this - I start flying again tomorrow. I will keep my eyes open. I will continue to make complaints to Security when I see them wave Arabs through without checking their IDs (as I saw in Detroit) and their boarding passes. I will continue to be very very observant. We all need to be vigilant.

I believe that what Annie Jacobsen saw is what happened. Face it, folks, there are still a whole bunch of bad guys out there. And this fat, middle-aged woman will do anything and everything in her power to keep them from bringing down any plane I'm on.

Posted by Beth at July 17, 2004 10:28 PM

Comments

Posted by: Boudicca at July 18, 2004 9:18 PM