'... blasting and destroying the places of amusement, immorality, and sin ... and attacking vital economic centers' as a required mission of the al Qaeda military organization,"

6:20 am CST - Fox News Headline: Detained Teen Allegedly Intended to Hijack Plane, Crash Into 'Hannah Montana' Concert

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,325426,00.html

This article doesn't give the teen's name or any other details about him (except to say that he was 'suicidal'), which always turns on a certain light in my mind. But I expect Debbie or Charles to have more about this before the day is through.

Posted by: rishika at January 25, 2008 7:33 AM

Recollections of Black Sunday.

Or The Sum of All Fears.

But you don't need a packed stadium for this to happen.

Posted by: Shy Guy at January 25, 2008 7:34 AM

Maybe, unfortunately it will take something like an attack of this sort to wake Americans from this stupor we're in. And at this time if it did happen we all know it would be Bushs fault.

Posted by: AMartinez at January 25, 2008 8:05 AM

"Virgins are standing by!"

...and are they ugly!...

Posted by: exsgtbrown at January 25, 2008 8:06 AM

"Maybe, unfortunately it will take something like an attack of this sort to wake Americans from this stupor we're in. And at this time if it did happen we all know it would be Bushs fault."

If they were able to carry it out by crossing the border then yes I would blame Iman Bush along with any politician that refused to secure our borders. As if it would wake up Americans, some it will, some Americans are just comatose.

Posted by: Elric66 at January 25, 2008 8:09 AM

Isn't a similar warning issued every year about the Super Bowl? It obviously would be a favoured target - think of the cheering, backslapping, firing of weapons and dancing in the streets as the enemy celebrates such a great victory!

Posted by: ImNoDhimmi at January 25, 2008 8:33 AM

"Isn't a similar warning issued every year about the Super Bowl? "

...Winston Churchill warned about the Germans for 10 years before WWII broke out....

Posted by: exsgtbrown at January 25, 2008 8:56 AM

I thought it was raisins and not virgins..........

Posted by: tanstaafl at January 25, 2008 9:32 AM

This is a given, it won't ever change. The Super Bowl will always be a target. What's laughable is that the government thinks they need to keep the increased threat level a big secret.

A couple years ago, the company for which I work sent an encrypted email to all security personnel letting us know of the increased threat level at the Super Bowl. The warning had been cut and pasted into the email with no attribution. We were told that the email was not to be forwarded outside the company.

I did a google search and found two links to the exact same article. One was at Fox Sports. The other was the English-language version of a Dubai newspaper.

Hardly a secret.

Yea, the Super Bowl is a target-rich environment and they'd love to hit it if they could. But they'd just as soon shoot up a mall or toss a pipe bomb into your bus stop.

Posted by: undaunted at January 25, 2008 9:34 AM

It's a matter of law that the government is not required to protect every person everywhere all the time from every threat. They're only required to protect society in a general way. You can't sue the police department because they didn't stop someone from conkin' you on the noggin and taking your wallet.

An attack at that level would take many months of preparation and recon, some of it discernable to the watchful eye. If an attack succeeded, it would be the fault of people around the perpetrators ~ from among us ~ all the head-buried dopes who, if they'd paid attention, would have seen the subtle indicators of attack preparation. Remember that idiot who lived next to the two pipe-bombers caught in South Carolina last summer? She said she saw suspicious stuff but didn't call the cops.

9-11 happened because lazy security supervisors decided it was okay for a passenger to have a box-cutter on a plane, and passed this stupidity on to their guard force.

So, no; it would not be the fault of George Bush.

Posted by: undaunted at January 25, 2008 10:21 AM

Thanks for the edit, Robert.

Posted by: undaunted at January 25, 2008 10:29 AM

Does anyone remember the strange story of Joel Hinrichs, the University of Oklahoma student who blew himself up on a bench outside the crowded football stadium during a game in 2005?

This was at first reported as nothing more than the suicide of a despondent student--OK, a rather more "colorful" method than taking pills or even jumping out of your dorm window, but certainly--certainly--not terrorism.

Well, it turned out that Hinrichs had a Pakistani roommate, had attended the mosque in the nearby town of Norman--the same mosque that 9-11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui had once attended, and had jihadist literature in his dorm room.

He also had a huge cache of explosives in his room. The suicide vest he used was also loaded with shrapnel, odd for someone who only meant to blow himself up (which is, let's face it, an extremely unusual--unprecidented?--way for someone to end it all--unless they were planning on taking quite a few other people with them.)

Here's a link:

http://www.fanblogs.com/oklahoma/005847.php

Posted by: gravenimage at January 25, 2008 10:34 AM

You're right, gravenimage. Hinricks was at least a sympathizer terrorist/sudden jihadist.

And they don't need to get inside the stadium. Several bombers at separate entrances or multiple bombers at one entrance would be enough to trash the entire day.

Since they're playing in Arizona, anyone with a bulky, long coat is a suspect.

But the tragedy that's too late to do anything about is that the Packers aren't playing.

Posted by: undaunted at January 25, 2008 10:49 AM

This is my favorite video right now
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJXW7mWPmkc
I hope some of you get to see it and favorite it before it is removed from YouTube.

Posted by: interestinconundrum at January 25, 2008 11:46 AM

Recollections of Black Sunday.

I couldn't remember the title but I can still see the book cover of the blimp coming over the field. The movie didn't quite do justice to the book.

Posted by: PMK at January 25, 2008 11:48 AM

to include individuals impersonating law enforcement and other security or service personnel and insiders to facilitate attacks," the threat assessment said.

Not long before we had a string of train derailments
the FBI was madly looking for a stolen piece of railroad equipment that could do just that.

They must have a reason for adding this. I know that police uniforms have been stolen in Atlanta lately, what about Arizona?

Posted by: Aunt Bea at January 25, 2008 12:40 PM

The day before the 777 airliner crashed at Heathrow I read on the internet that the plane's system were in danger of being hacked into.
Now the problem is frozen jet fuel, any pilots here buy that?

Posted by: Aunt Bea at January 25, 2008 12:43 PM

I'm not a pilot but I know for a fact that the FAA is putting major heat on US plane makers to make drop-dead sure that new models avionics/comms cannot be hacked.

Frozen jet fuel. Yea, sure ... that's the ticket.

Posted by: undaunted at January 25, 2008 1:10 PM

Aunt Bea and Undaunted,

To clarify your comments:

1. Modern avionics and "systems" can NOT be hacked,
2. It has to be really, REALLY cold (on the order of -40C or colder) for ice particles to even form in Jet A.

File both these statements in the category where they belong: "conspiracy theory".

Let's wait for the AAIB and NTSB, Boeing, and Rolls-Royce to finish their investigation.

I am a pilot, and I fly big airplanes.

Posted by: boneshack at January 25, 2008 3:00 PM

Boneshack, thank you for the clarification.
But I got the frozen slushy fuel from ABC.
The other thing was just a coincidence and I got it origianly from Foxnews a few weeks before the crash and had to go back and hunt it down.
I don't read conspiracy people or if I do I recognize them as such.

But I will be patient.

After the Long Island Plane crash in the nineties I argued with my friends and family that even if it was brought down by a missile, that it was the governments responsibility to protect the airlines or people wouldn't fly.
I guess you would say I was more naive then or more trusting.

Posted by: Aunt Bea at January 25, 2008 5:44 PM

boneshack;

Thanks for your clarification.

I'm not an avionics/systems guy so maybe I used imprecise terms. But if a wireless signal is sent from a cockpit computer to a receiver/controller of some sort elsewhere in the plane, then someone can interfere with that signal. No matter how safe something is, there's always some donkey in his basement figuring out a way to defeat that protection.

If planes can't be influenced by external signals then why do we have to turn off all cell phones, etc., once aboard?

My 'yea, that's the ticket' clause was a joke, not an allusion to conspiracy of any sort. The line I wrote just before that; well, I'll just let it stand.

Posted by: undaunted at January 25, 2008 6:17 PM

Undaunted and Aunt Bea

I don't want to stray OT (that's to say, this isn't an aviation forum), but I will answer your question.

Every system (mechanical, computers, etc) communicate the old fashioned way - with wires. The are no "signals", so there's nothing to interfere with.

Secondly, to bust another myth, the prohibition on cell phones comes from the FCC , not the FAA.

Q.E.D.

ABC and Fox are typical of the media - talking about things where they have no clue.

P.S. I knew it was a joke. Have a great Jihad-Free evening!

Posted by: boneshack at January 25, 2008 6:47 PM

Having a jihad-free evening.

Thx.

Posted by: undaunted at January 25, 2008 9:10 PM

I am not suprised that the jihadists would want to threaten the Super Bowl, because they know what the most part of football is, the FOOTBALL ITSELF, which is made from PIGSKINS. We know their view of pigs are.

Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at January 26, 2008 2:06 AM

Heard on the news the day after it was offical who was going to the Super Bowl, New England/New York, it announced that there will be fighter pilot jet airplanes flying over the stadium for added protection. So in truth, with all the added security measures, the jihadists would really have to be crazy to even think of pulling off any possible attacks.

Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at January 26, 2008 2:13 AM