Friday, July 20, 2007

The No-Fly Terrorist List, National Security, and Sanity

Dateline, Kansas City, Missouri.

Common sense? No common sense here!

An 8-year-old boy has a name that's on a terrorist no-fly list. That's why, when he arrived at the airport in Cortez, Colorado, he was told "We cant get you on this plane, you're a terrorist." The whole weird story is on the Kansas City FOX 4 website: Metro 8-Year-Old Shows Up On No-Fly Terrorist List

Happily, an investigation determined that the preteen Tom Sawyer lookalike was not a dangerous terrorist: but not before the kid missed his plane.

"It's not really fair that I couldn't get home because another man in the world was a terrorist," he said, displaying a degree of wisdom and insight that I sincerely wish would be displayed more often in adults. Some days, I'd settle for a little common sense.

The Transportation Security Administration says that there aren't any children on the terrorist watch list: under the circumstances, that statement isn't all that reassuring.

This latest example of a security system with zero tolerance for sanity raises a real concern. While airport security was busy protecting travelers from an 8-year-old kid, how much attention was being paid to people who might be real terrorists?

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Blogroll

Note! Although I believe that these websites and blogs are useful resources for understanding the War on Terror, I do not necessarily agree with their opinions. 1 1 Given a recent misunderstanding of the phrase "useful resources," a clarification: I do not limit my reading to resources which support my views, or even to those which appear to be accurate. Reading opinions contrary to what I believed has been very useful at times: sometimes verifying my previous assumptions, sometimes encouraging me to change them.

Even resources which, in my opinion, are simply inaccurate are sometimes useful: these can give valuable insights into why some people or groups believe what they do.

In short, It is my opinion that some of the resources in this blogroll are neither accurate, nor unbiased. I do, however, believe that they are useful in understanding the War on Terror, the many versions of Islam, terrorism, and related topics.