Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Crossing the Rubicon?

Rantburg has it nailed (shameless steal follows):
New Chapter for the Vagina Monologues
Ok, somebody finally said it in public:
Russian Planes Exploded From Toilets
Evidence Supports Prior Reports of Al Qaeda Women Smuggling Explosives Internally?

What makes this especially ominous is this report from six months ago, claiming that Al Qaeda was training female bombers to smuggle explosives inside their vaginas. The plan was to extract the explosives and then assemble the bomb in the toilet, of course.

I have no idea how this country will react to this, if this is the new tactic. As I mentioned when I first noted this story (CAUTION: contains very indelicate language), we’re either going to have to subject women to highly, HIGHLY intrusive body-searches or else we’re just going to have to allow Al Qaeda to blow up airplanes whenever they feel like it.

If this is the new tactic, it seems to me that this will be the Rubicon as regards racial profiling. Non-Muslim women are not going to put up with being told that they must subject themselves to unscheduled gynecological exams just to be "fair" to all women. And, as humiliating and intrusive as such searches might be, I don’t see how we can do anything else but subject only Muslim women (or primarily Muslim women) to this admitted indignity.

Perhaps there’s a technological solution. But that too has its problems; I don’t know if many women will gladly accept dangerous X-raying of their wombs just to board an airplane.

...
And remember the "male version" that Annie Jacobsen witnessed? Annie is already on the case...

UPDATE: You really need to read Annie's most recent update. Here's how it ends:
In Part Five of this series, I interviewed fellow flight 327 passenger Billie Jo Rodriguez. Rodriguez gave me the startling news that one of the Syrian men spent about 10 minutes in the lavatory and then came out of the lavatory reeking of toilet chemicals. As I have previously stated, multiple government agencies (including FBI, JTTF, FAMS and LAPD) met the plane in Los Angeles to question the men. But because the men didn't immediately match up against names on the government's no-fly lists, they were let go.

Here is another detail that I have only recently discovered. I now know that the 14 Syrians aboard my flight 327 were questioned by the FBI for between 20 and 30 minutes after landing. (Initially, I was told they were held and questioned for approximately two hours.) How can our agencies possibly gather intelligence on 14 men in only 20 minutes? Even if they had done some of the legwork before the plane landed, they couldn't possibly conduct a thorough investigation in such short time. And again, I'll ask why none of the other passengers were questioned? Had the FBI ascertained Billie Jo Rodriguez' information about one of the Syrian men emerging from a bathroom smelling like toilet chemicals (after nearly knocking another passenger over so as to get inside first) -- those men may not have been out the door and on their way to their musical gig after just 20 minutes.

As of press time, no one from the FBI, the JTTF or the DHL or any other government agency has contacted me, Billie Jo Rodriguez or any of the other passengers on flight 327. Maybe the Russians will. The war on terrorism is a global war. It knows no boundaries. Whether you're on a Russian TU-134 or a Boeing 757, the enemy is the same.
And you were wondering why defense isn't enough?