Terrorists are practicing....

[minus273]

Knock yourself out, literally!

If Johnny can get any money out of me I will take it as the second coming, because it will surely be a miracle. Blood from a stone, I am Scottish and we are know as a tight fisted bunch.

Anyways I would think by looking at some of the people who post here that some of those Astronaut chimps had more flight time and experience.

Have a good evening and remember drink and politics don't mix.

-273

 

[Snakum]

Losers

Why is it that ATL and I can disagree and still be respectful, still act like the educated adults that we are, yet as usual ... you gotta go name calling. Well you asked for it ...

100LL, you are obviously still upset about that thing with me and your old lady, and as you know, I have apologized already and I will apologize again for sending you the doctor's bill when she gave me the drip. I know that was really rubbing it in, and it was a bit immature. But you must understand, I too was upset to learn that she'd also done half of CLT's rampers yet didn't tell me until after I'd been billed for the 'Silver Bullets'.

There ... now do you feel better? Now we're both acting like immature jerk-offs.

You're a class act, Dippy.

Minh

 

[100LL... Again!]

PLease do not pretend that you have not indulged in more than a little name-calling in the past.

And the closest my gal would get to you would be just enough to wipe her shoes off on you.

Then again, you may be into that sort of thing. If so, enjoy.


and... Dippy! Oh ouch! The pain... the humiliation...
That's what grandpa used to call me when he got drunk and mean.

 

[Swass]

Somebody's running around here with a quote from Snakum as their sig. Something about Jesus freak ass clowns comes to mind.

 

[Snakum]

I don't pretend. I said about a month ago that I now fight fire with fire. No one here has ever heard me start this juvenile name-calling BS. But a few weeks ago I said publicly that when someone else did I will stoop to their level from now on. It is also quite obvious that the Right-wingers and the Christians have historically started the "moron" "idiot" etc. comments, or even worse, comments like the Christian ass-clown who tried to use my father's terminal illness in a discussion about religion. Low class, bro .... low class. Search the posts ... you'll see it. When the lefties are arguing, I've rarely seen them start that crap. I've seen a couple respond in kind, but I've never seen them start it. I've argued with ATL, Typhoon, Jarhead, and others that lean a little bit to the left, but they've never resorted to the old "Loser" "Idiot" etc. BS. They've acted like adults. You didn't, however ... you started name-calling.

So now you know ... when you start the name-calling I reserve the right to disparage your heritage, make lewd comments about your spouse, question your sexuality, and any other lewd, crude, demeaning comment that comes to mind. Then we'll all be on the same sheet of music. We'll both be rude, juvenile ass-monkeys.




Minh

Edit ... 100LL, I think I already said once before that since you'd piled up so many 'Jerk Points' already , that I'd reserved the right to actually START the name-calling where you're concerned.

 

[ATL2CDG]

Point - counterpoint

I came across this blog on one of the other websites that I frequent. While I do not inherenly agree or disagree with the position of the piece, I feel the author made some very good points.

Enjoy!

http://www.donaldsensing.com/2004/07/casing-northwest-327-threat-or-hoax.html

Casing Northwest #327 - threat or hoax?
Now-famous account seems over-detailed; color me skeptical

There is a lot of controversy over whether "Terror in the Skies," by Annie Jacobsen in Women's Wall Street is credible. Annie wrote at engrossing length about Northwest Airlines Flight 327, from Detroit to Los Angeles, on which there were 14 Arab men acting extremely suspiciously - suspiciously enough to alarm the flight crew and cause a swarm of federal officers to charge the aircraft after it gated in LAX.

Michelle Malkin wrote today that she spoke to Dave Adams of the Federal Air Marshals Service (FAMS), who confirmed the main outline of the story - he "was a bit defensive in confirming the story, which seems to lend unsettling credence to Jacobsen's account," says Malkin. (Why would this add credence? I was a spokesman for this federal law-enforcement agency and can understand Dave's "defensiveness" (more likely caution) in speaking with a reporter who seems to have decided in advance that he had something to hide.)

The feds, says Annie, questioned the 14 men at length and finally released them after determining they were clean. They were, reportedly, a musical band hired to play in LA, hence their trip.

So around the internet the story has traveled, resulting in arguments for and against its authenticity. Malkin says the story is true in the main, confirmed by FAMS. But others argue, "Elements of Mrs. Jacobsen's story do not have the ring of truth."

Count me as one of the skeptics.

One of the things I learned in the years I have spent in law enforcement at both the federal and local level is that witnesses of traumatic events relate few details. When people are frightened or otherwise psychologically shocked, their minds don't record movies, but snapshots, and not many of them, either.

Annie's story has a wealth of detail, so much that I find myself disbelieving that she could have been as afraid as she says she was. Since she nowhere indicates that she took contemporaneous notes, I have to conclude her story was written from memory, and written at a minimum many hours after the flight landed.

Look at what Malkin says FAMS confirmed:


... there were 14 Syrians on the flight; they were questioned by the Los Angeles Police Department, FBI, FAM, and so on; they were a musical band.
That's it. This is a far cry from confirming that Annie's story is all its impressive detail is accurate. In fact, it's not even close.

As charitably as I can, let me explain why I think that Annie considerably embellished her story, and not necessarily embellished it deliberately (but might have in some parts; she's a paid writer after all).

One thing professional investigators learn is that almost every witness they interview understands the events concerned through certain, pre-existing templates. One reason different witnesses of the same events give accounts often greatly varying from each other is that their templates are so different. So investigators learn to be suspicious of details, except for the real, main details that are so obvious or important that they break through anyone's template.

Example: a bank robbery gone bad. Witness A says the robber fired his gun several times. "B" says it was nine times. "C" says it was a half-dozen. "D" says the robber had an automatic weapon and sprayed the area. What have they agreed on? Only that the robber fired his gun more than once.

Like most Americans, Annie Jacobsen has a certain template of post-9/11 airline travel that Arab men, especially multiples, are a potential threat aboard an airliner. This is not an unreasonable template, given that it wasn't kilt-wearing Scotsmen who committed 9/11's grim deeds. I have that template, too.

But unconsciously this template affects how she interpreted the events aboard the airliner. She was predisposed to understand the Arab men's actions in threatening ways. She even admits it. Before all the passengers even finished boarding:

As we sat waiting for the plane to finish boarding, we noticed another large group of Middle Eastern men boarding. The first man wore a dark suit and sunglasses. He sat in first class in seat 1A, the seat second-closet to the cockpit door. The other seven men walked into the coach cabin. As "aware" Americans, my husband and I exchanged glances, and then continued to get comfortable. I noticed some of the other passengers paying attention to the situation as well. As boarding continued, we watched as, one by one, most of the Middle Eastern men made eye contact with each other. They continued to look at each other and nod, as if they were all in agreement about something. I could tell that my husband was beginning to feel "anxious."
NB: the plane was still loading passengers, and Annie has already decided that the Arab men are threats. She has already decided they are threats - for what? They made "eye contact" with one another and seemed to agree about something. Might thay have been ensuring they were all together and simply acknowledging that fact?

This is the mighty thin gruel from which Annie constructs a banquet of a near-death experience. Even a McDonald's bag, carried by one of the Arabs, becomes ominous:

But once we were in the air and the seatbelt sign was turned off, the unusual activity began. The man in the yellow T-shirt got out of his seat and went to the lavatory at the front of coach -- taking his full McDonald's bag with him. When he came out of the lavatory he still had the McDonald's bag, but it was now almost empty. He walked down the aisle to the back of the plane, still holding the bag. When he passed two of the men sitting mid-cabin, he gave a thumbs-up sign. When he returned to his seat, he no longer had the McDonald's bag.
Hmm... The bag was full, then it was "almost empty," then it was gone. Sounds like what happens to my McDonalds bag when I finish eating.

Her whole story is rich with such innuendo, after which we learn that nothing happened.

Red State blog says bluntly that Annie's story, "Seems Like a Hoax to Me." They are near-scornfully dismissive of Annie's report of the flight crews' covert alliance with Annie and her husband - which rang very unlikely with me as well - and denounce the whole account as a hoax.

I don't think Annie's article is a hoax. But by no means is it an unbiased, dispassionate, objective account of the flight. Annie was convinced from before takeoff until after landing that her life was in potential peril, and this template filtered every event.

What I am very skeptical of is the wealth of minutiae she reports. Michelle Malkin wrote that OpinionJournal's James Taranto pointed out that the Annie Jacobsen who offers "Creative Writing, Dreamwork, Individual Psychotherapy" lives in Canada, not LA. But I think the account shows some pretty creative recollection, anyway.

So what did happen on Flight 327? Probably nothing more than what Dave Adams of FAMS confirmed explicitly or implicitly to Malkin: there were 14 Arab men traveling with Syrian passports. Their actions did alert the aircrew enough to contact LAX to have federal officers waiting for the plane. The Arabs, a band en route to a gig in LA, were detained, questioned and released.

That's the entire story.

A reasonable question: were the Arabs in fact a band? A commenter on Malkin's site named a real american [sic] wrote (no direct link),

Did you ever stop to think that Detroit, Michigan has one of the largest populations of Arab-Americans in the nation?

Did you ever stop to think that perhaps an Arab family in LA hired the band for a wedding?

I lived in Akron, Ohio and my nice arab employers hired a band from DETROIT to come play at their daughter's wedding, that band had like 10 people in it.
I am absolutely confident that the feds did check their hire out, almost certainly before they released them. And monitored the gig, too.

I won't try to split hairs over how much of Annie's account is embellished, except for the bare details FAMS confirmed, nor how much of it might have been deliberately, not unconsciously, embellished. Nor am I accusing Annie of making a mountain out of a molehill - Arab terrorism against American airlines is a real, persistent threat. But I do think she templated the events enormously, to the point that I am skeptical of most of the other details.

As I finish writing this post, I see a new post by Michelle that I think confirms my template postulate:

Just got off the phone with Annie Jacobsen. ... Recounting the flight, she told me "My legs were like rubber...It was four and a half hours of terror."
So Annie says she was terrorized before the plane even took off.

Michelle also says that the Washington Post "has been sitting on the true story" (well, how much is true, Michelle?) "since last Friday," and that "NBC Nightly News, ABC, and Dateline NBC are now on the story as well." She also says that FAMS has "apparently supplied" (to whom she says not) witness statements and "other corroborations of Jacobsen's account."

Which, if true, really just proves that the feds concluded there was no threat, because files of active investigations are never released.

I remain skeptical for the reasons I explained above, but it is certain that Annie Jacobsen was indeed scared witless by predisposition to be scared, and this fact affected how she understood and reported everything. Lots of embellishments, psychologizing and dramatic reporting here.

 

[100LL... Again!]

I personally never cared if the story was true or not.


I simply support let-them-know-where-we-stand screening procedures.

Let them be offended. If they were going to attack us anyway, what's the harm.

Abdullah: "Infidel dogs humiliated me in the TSA line!"

Abdel: "Just for that, we slit extra throats before crashing airplane! Or we use bigger bomb."
If they are sensible, they will understand. And they are free to make me submit to similar searches every time I fly to Syria.

 

[johnpeace]

We'll both be rude, juvenile ass-monkeys.

Dude, it's no small wonder you are having such a hard time getting your career off the ground...you have a MAJOR attitude problem.

 

[Swass]

Dude, it's no small wonder you are having such a hard time getting your career off the ground...you have a MAJOR attitude problem.

In Snakum's defense, lot's of people attack out of knee jerk reaction to things being written that don't fall inlline with their political leanings (myself included). I like reading Minh's comments because I crack up at his humor. If you take everything here that seriously then you would be wise to lighten up anyway, that piece of coal up your ass is now a diamond ( I guess you can't bitch about being a broke pilot anymore).

 

[Snakum]

If you take everything here that seriously then you would be wise to lighten up anyway, that piece of coal up your ass is now a diamond ( I guess you can't bitch about being a broke pilot anymore).

That's the best advice you'll get all week John.

If you look up 'Stick-Up-The-Ass' in Webster's Dictionary it's a picture of JohnPiece(OS) going "Huh?". Isn't there a 'My God Can't Kick Your God's Ass' thread somewhere with your name on it? Run along Dippy ... the adults are talking.

Minh
(BTW ... my 'career' has been off the ground since I got out of college, way back when your mother was still making money on her back. I don't fly for a living ... putz. )