UK has terror alert in all airports...

[JudyS Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JudyS]

I wasn't suggesting deporting people, religious leaders or otherwise, for criticizing the government. They would have to deport half the population in the USA and about 80% in the UK to do that I was referring to those who incite murder, which is what some of them are doing.

True. I realized after I posted that “criticizing the government” was not the right phrase for me to have used; you were referring to something far more specific and serious than that. Still, I don’t think that deporting people who incite violence will solve the problem. There are many ways to foment hatred without actually telling people to go out and kill; there is also the problem of how (and where) to deport someone if they are a citizen; plus there is the problem that at least a subset of the terrorists are learning their hate overseas, not in the US or UK. Unfortunately, Islamic fundamentalists have a lot of hostility towards the west that is not going to go away any time soon.

The problem with the July 2005 bombers in the UK was that there had been absolutely no indication that at least 2 of the 4 had any political / religious interests, let alone that they would go that far.

My understanding is that three of the July 2005 bombers had traveled to Pakistan for religious training of various sorts. This sort of travel history is one of the main things that I was suggesting looking at. All four were young (or at least fairly young) men who were traveling alone. The idea isn’t to come up with a definitive list of terrorist characteristics that will say exactly who is and who isn’t a terrorist; the idea is to figure out who is more likely to be a terrorist, and who is less likely, and then question the more likely ones, rather than wasting time by confiscating toothpaste from and checking the shoes of people in the “less likely” category.

The current incident didn't involve any one person putting a bomb onto a plane, that's why it is such a difficult problem. Seperate components would be carried by a number of people. Each component in isolation is harmless and innocuous, and can be carried for perfectly innocent purposes. It's only when the items are combined that a bomb is created.
I tend to agree that focussing on ordinary objects is of limited value, but without that focus this time round it could have been raining bodies over a number of US cities on Thursday afternoon!! If I have to make a choice of being inconvenienced at the airport or picking up body parts from city streets, I know which option I will take.

I know that the plan was to combine several parts on board to make a bomb, but I didn’t think all of the parts were ordinary, innocuous, objects. I thought the plan was to disguise the actual explosives by putting them into an ordinary object such as a sports drink can, and then use ordinary objects such as an electronic key fob to provide the spark to detonate the explosives. I don’t know of any innocent substances that passengers were previously allowed to bring on planes, that will cause much of an explosion when mixed together. Generally, any substance reactive enough to cause an explosion when mixed with something else is going to be too reactive to be safely carried by passengers on a plane.

Anyway, my point was that an attempted suicide bombing is different from a bomb placed into a plane’s hold. A suicide bomber is likely to be under a great deal of stress, which a trained questioner will be able to detect.

In the case of this most recent attempt, remember that these particular plotters were detected not by searching their baggage, but by old fashioned police work. At this point, how many terrorists have ever been caught by searching their hand luggage?