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Improving Transportation Security in the US

© lawhawk

Terrorism experts have been warning for years that hijackers could crash a plane. The celebrated author Tom Clancy even posed a scenario in his novels that had a trained pilot flying his plane, a 747 jumbo jet, in to the Capitol building during a joint session of Congress with the President and Supreme Court present. Yet, nothing could prepare us for the horrific events of September 11.

The carnage was like nothing anyone had seen in the US. The devastation around the World Trade Center in New York City was utter and complete. Thousands of lives were snuffed out in an instant and thousands more lives were possibly saved because of the heroism of several passengers on board a hijacked jet that crashed in Pennsylvania before it could find another target to strike in Washington DC.

The terrorists were able to find their way into airplanes without being challenged. They managed to bring on board weapons. They could gain access to supposedly secure areas of airports - to case the airports and intended areas that they would strike at. Security in the US was beyond lax. It was practically nonexistent at the airports from which the four doomed aircraft took off.

Today, there is supposedly improved security measures in place. The problem is that the security is still far from what it should be. The law enforcement community knows it - and so do the terrorists. They know that they struck a near fatal blow to our sense of safety in the US. The terrorists will continue to strike blows - perhaps none as brazen as the 9-11-2001 attacks, but they wont have to be. We are unprepared to deal with them, just as we were on 9-11.

The terrorists also know that the attacks will have a very definite effect on world geopolitics and that is part of the reason for their attacks. They intend to unilaterally change the way the US does business throughout the world and the terrorists decided to give the US a bloody nose to show them that not everyone agrees with the idea of peaceful resolution to longstanding conflicts. These same people believe that the US and Islam are at odds and that Islam must prevail at all costs. These are the people that may try to hijack planes again.

With that in mind, I submitted the following letter to the FAA following the horrific events September 21, 2001. It is my hope that others would do as well. You can go to the FAA website at http://www.faa.gov :

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