All posts by Rand Simberg

Uncategorized

More Questions For Osama (from Larry King)

Glenn Reynolds has a great list of questions for Osama–much better than CNN’s. I’m just glad that Larry King didn’t get the Osama interview. Here are the questions he might have asked. (Use your imagination for the voice)

  1. What was it like, growing up in such a big family?
  2. Does it bother you that none of your brothers or sisters have the same mother?
  3. Do you ever talk to them–what do they think about your profession?
  4. It must have been kind of a thrill to see those buildings fall down like that. Were you surprised?
  5. Does it make you feel bad to listen to all these people around the world who are angry with you?
  6. What’s it like living in a cave? How do you do the laundry? Do you have someone come in once a week and sprinkle fresh dirt?
  7. Do you really have a tiny penis?

Political Commentary

Anthrax Hysteria

Brit Hume on Fox News just blasted what happened up on the Hill today. Apparently, the House just decided to close up shop because of the anthrax scare. The irony is that the only place that it’s been found is on the Senate side, and they’re staying in session. Brit appropriately pointed out that for all of the fuss and fury, we have had only one death, and only one serious illness from this, that the situation has been overhyped (e.g., it turns out that all the claims about the Senate attack being “weapons grade” were nonsense), and that if we’re going to react like this to such a relatively trivial concern, what will we do when we really have a major problem?

Right on, and I wish more of the press would be as clear thinking and rational as Brit. Congress is supposed to lead by example. Now, normally, I’m all in favor of Congress shutting down, and recessing early, on general principles, but this sends the entirely wrong message to whoever has been sending out these little love letters–that for a tiny investment in “powdery subtances” (aka powder, even wheat flour) and postage, they can shut down the American government.

Denny, you’re supposed to be a wrestling coach. Get a testosterone injection.

Uncategorized

Why Media Targeted for Anthrax?

Attacking the media ensures the word will get out, and that the news will be laced with fear. For example, Sam Donaldson was asking Thompson stupid questions because Donaldson’s wetting his pants in fear of being a target. This enhances the effect of a very weak weapon.

Good point. They were counting on media stupidity and wimpitude. Unfortunately, they were right on both counts.

War Commentary

The War Has Come To Us

This apparently hasn’t sunk in yet. A lot of your save-the-Earth-grandmothers-against-guns types can parade around public buildings all they want chanting and carrying poorly constructed anachronistic peace signs, but they happen to be at war while doing so.

Why, just the other day passengers on a United Airlines airplane took it upon themselves to keep a deranged passenger from trying to enter the cockpit. Hip, hip, hooray! That behavior is an act of civil defense in a time of war, is it not? It even requires that we shake the conventions of peacetime travel when we are expected to sit tranquilly in our seats and follow federal regulations.

And on that note, I point out that I was prescient, and reprint a little editorial I posted on s.s.p the day after the attack.

End of an Era

They blew their wad.

The grounding of the nation’s air fleet can be lifted–it’s safe to fly again.

Whoever committed this heinous crime yesterday did do the world at least one favor. In a single day, they ended the four-decade reign of fear over aircraft hijacking.

Forever.

This incident didn’t result from a breakdown of security–no one had weapons that the security system looks for. The reason, and the only reason, that the perpetrators succeeded in their diabolical plot was that they had the element of surprise.

Prior to September 11, 2001, aircraft hijacking was something to be prevented if possible, but if it wasn’t possible, the hijackers were people to be cooperated with until they could somehow be brought to justice, in order to save plane, crew and passengers.

This attitude allowed men armed, apparently, with only knives, to commandeer an aircraft in which they were massively outnumbered, by threatening or killing individual passengers and crew. To save those people, everyone went along, at least on three of the four planes.

Had those passengers been aware of the ultimate purpose of those hijackings, they would have failed–the hijackers would have been overcome and subdued, if not killed, by passengers and crew desperate to save themselves and their plane.

The paradigm has permanently shifted. From this day forward, passengers will now be aware that there are worse things than letting hostages die in an aircraft.

Whoever did this screwed it up for all future hijackers, regardless of their purpose. A similar scheme will not succeed today, or tomorrow, or any time that the flying public retain memories of what happened yesterday.

No need to change procedures–the potential victims themselves have changed, fundamentally, and will be victims no more.

Let the aircraft fly.