Sometimes I think the terrorists are winning. Sometimes I know they are. ABC reports today that fighter jets scramble following at least 6 reports of threats to passenger planes. Here's an example:
Authorities said that the decision to have the plane escorted by two fighter jets was done "out of an abundance of caution" after the Maryland State Police McHenry Barrack, in Garrett County, received an anonymous call of a “chemical weapons threat” aboard Air France Flight 22, which was en route from Paris to the New York City airport.
And this is not the first time this has happened, one notorious example happening on 9/11/2011 involving
long bathroom visits. That particular incident resulted in
strip-searching of several darker-skinned people.
So one does not even need a bomb anymore. One doesn't even need to be on a plane. All it takes is a telephone. What exactly were these fighter jets going to do, anyway? I thought we had the phone threat licked? And what of all that drone warfare in Waziristan? We should be reaping the dividends of peace from all that by now, no?
As Bruce Schneier says:
If you are scared, they win. If you refuse to be scared, they lose.