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Another Plane Down in New York
Another plane has crashed, this time in Queens. You can read a blurb at Yahoo.
CNN.com isn't responding for me. LaGuardia, Newark and JFK are closed now. Update: 11/12 14:54 GMT by T : New reports indicate that the plane was departing from JFK, not arriving. Also, CNN has confirmed that this was American Airlines flight 587, an Airbus A 300. Update: 11/12 14:57 GMT by T : Further information is that the plane was en route to the Dominican Republic, and that the disaster actually involves two crash sites, not just one -- an engine fell from the plane some distance from the fuselage.
Heading to Dominican Republic and thus, full of fuel. Was this a non-stop flight?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Why do so many people seem to think that not attacking Afghanistan means "doing nothing"?
We have alot of options besides engaging in inapropriate military action.
Why inapropriate? Donald Rumsfeld said that we're unlikely to catch Bin Laden. Many members of the Taliban are no longer in the Taliban and will never be caught. Besides all of these peopl already invaded Afghanistan. Neither Bin Laden nor the Taliban are Afghani. We are bombing innocent civilians who happened to have the misfortune of being invaded by people who attacked the US as well.
Oh, sure, that one guy's post "Leap" is going to polarise world opinion, lead to greater support for radical organizations, kill innocent people abroad, and be used to justify further attacks. I'm sure Bin Laden is reading it right now, thinking, "Let's get 'em!"
Like a post on slashdot could ever make that much difference.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
YES, OSAMA needs to be dealt with harshly, NOT ever Muslim we can find. What the hell are you thinking? The attacks on us by the EXTREMISTS are aimed indiscriminately at all Americans. Going out and arresting and attacking all Muslims would be exactly THE SAME THING THEY ARE DOING TO US. We CAN NOT, we MUST NOT loose all sense of human decency and the Constitution of the United States. Al Qaeda needs to be brought to justice for attacking us, The Taliban needs to be brought to justice for harboring al Qaeda, but NOT Afghanistan, NOT the entire Muslim world. Don't loose your humanity.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
I'm a geek, and I give a fuck about plane crashes. This is an issue that all people should be concerned about. Not because it is a personal threat, but because it is a threat to all of society. Think about it, if the terrorist succeed, and the Taliban takes over the world, do you think open source is going to fair well? Slashdot will be gone, because it allows free discussion like this thread.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
Afghanistan is lucky that Bush is such a nice guy... we're the only people who care enough to feed the poor Afghani people who are ALSO victims of state sponsored terrorism. If Bush had just followed the opinion polls, he'd have nuked Afghanistan into a lake on Sept. 11 right after the towers fell (which we all know would be a truly horrible thing).
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
I couldn't agree more. For those interested, please check out http://www.trivini.com/20010911.html, wich a friend of mine wrote.
Please, America, use your head instead of your force.
-B
On the radio just now, some dude in New York was being interviewed and said he saw a truck with a thing sticking out of it like a missle.
This raises the possibility that the plane was shot at from the ground.
Obviously major news organizations will not report this, even if it turns out to be true. Did anyone else hear this report?
Reality has a liberal bias
1) Those moderates weren't really moderate in the first place. I say: fuck them and we can kill them too. I think that it was made pretty clear that people are either for or against the US. Moderate = Terrorist.
2) Innocent in what way? Innocent in that they are still living over there on the moon since they aren't lucky enough to get to come here and try their hand at killing Americans? They fight for a morality that is defined as evil by the principles that this country has been founded on.
3) The cycle of violence comment is out of place on this planet. Sometimes people will try to take you out no matter what you do save surrender to their oppression. This is one of those times. We can either retaliate and take out as many of them as we can, or just wait around for more from them. Sure it will happen throughout history and the future, but when you allow it to happen your nation dies.
Some people think that American ideals (not beating women for absurd reasons, being allowed to fly a kite, getting an education, not living on the moon, not being forced to follow some silly religion - and they are ALL silly including christianity, and being led by someone that we elected ourselves) are worth fighting for and preserving.
Some people don't care much, but all the Birkenstock wearing tree huggers that love to post on slashdot and spout opinions regarding US inaction when it comes to defending itself would not have been able to construct their eloquent but ridiculous arguments - having the vocabulary of an 11 year old, given that a 6th grade education is all that Allah wants you to have.
When you have termites in your house - even just a few, you eradicate them to avoid them taking everything over and your house falling down. That's the current situation.
Some people choose to fight for factions that are no better than hordes of insects.
Good day.
~D
We've got some reliable linkage online here. Check comments there for further updates.
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Salon Premium has this article (for which I pay $30 / year) all about the threat of portable SAMs... Hand-held terror
Shoulder-launched missiles are cheap, portable and deadly against lumbering commercial jets -- and terrorists in the U.S. may already have them.
By Paul J. Caffera
Nov. 5, 2001 | American Airlines Flight 970 was supposed to be routine, a two-hour hop from Managua, Nicaragua, to Miami International Airport. The only thing different about the scheduled flight leaving from Augusto Cesar Sandino International Airport on March 31, 1993, was that it was carrying senior-level Nicaraguan diplomats. Just before the plane was to take off, airport authorities received an anonymous telephone call threatening to shoot down the Boeing 727 with a shoulder-launched missile.
The plane was kept on the ground until security crews could sweep the area by foot and helicopter for any suspicious activity. The authorities had plenty of reason for concern -- the caller had said the plane would be shot down with a "Redeye" missile. Redeyes, the first American-made, shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, had been captured by the Russians at the end of the Vietnam War and subsequently shipped to the Cubans, who then funneled them to Nicaragua's communist Sandinista regime.
In the end, the flight took off without incident, but the incident unnerved airport authorities and American Airlines, who realized that they were virtually powerless against the invisible threat. It also showed how close to home the threat of shoulder-launched missile attacks against passenger jets has come.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, aviation experts warn that shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles could be used against American passenger jets in the future. Terrorist organizations like Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network are already believed to own such missiles, and some say it will only be a matter of time before they filter into the U.S. -- if they haven't already.
So-called Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, or MANPADS, are capable of knocking a jet out of the sky from as far as five miles away and at an altitude of up to 13,000 feet in as little as 13 seconds. Those aboard often have no warning before the missile explodes as it slams into an engine, air-conditioning unit or other heat-producing device on the aircraft.
In addition to American-made Stingers -- currently in the news because hundreds were supplied by the U.S. to the mujahedin fighters in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979 -- there are also Russian versions of the technology, including the Strela and IGLA series missiles. Highly accurate, easy to use and conceal, they are readily available on the black market around the world.
According to a 1997 CIA report, shoulder-launched missiles were used 27 times against civilian aircraft in the last 19 years, resulting in 400 casualties. A 1994 State Department report offers a slightly higher figure -- 536 fatalities of passengers and crew as a result of 25 civilian aircraft incidents involving MANPAD missile attacks. A Department of Defense report released in 2000 goes a step farther, stating that "one of the leading causes of loss of life in commercial aviation worldwide has been from MANPADS attacks, with over 30 aircraft lost."
Most of the incidents have been concentrated in Africa and the former republics of the Soviet Union, but there have also been attacks in Near East Asia and Central America.
The prospect of a domestic antiaircraft missile attack has captivated American minds for several years now. Speculation that a Stinger was behind the explosion that downed TWA Flight 800 was so great that the Pentagon even launched several of the missiles off the coast of Florida during the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation of the crash in order to disprove those theories.
The threat to commercial aviation first emerged in 1973, when Italian police arrested five Palestinian terrorists armed with antiaircraft missiles as they waited to shoot down an El-Al plane in Rome. But the first actual launching of a MANPAD missile at a commercial aircraft came in November, 1975, in the skies above Angola, according to a report published by the Pentagon's Joint Technical Coordinating Group on Aircraft Survivability.
Among the most widely publicized incidents involving commercial aircraft were the downings of two Rhodesian Airlines flights in 1978 and 1979 over what is now Zimbabwe, using Russian SA-7 missiles. The attacks resulted in the deaths of at least 111 passengers and crew.
In 1993, according to the State Department, a TU-154 aircraft in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia carrying 100 passengers, including a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, made a crash landing at the airport in Sukhumi after being struck in midair by a heat-seeking MANPADS missile. Only 26 of the passengers were able to escape before the plane exploded into flames on the runway, killing everyone left on board.
In the decades since the missiles first emerged, various government agencies have become increasingly alarmed by the threat they pose.
Gary Stubblefield, who heads the security firm Vantage Security and has testified before Congress about the threat of terrorism, describes the shoulder-fired missiles as "aviation's dirty little secret."
In April, Air Force Gen. Charles T. Robertson Jr., the commander in charge of the military's "heavy lift" services, responsible for transporting troops and weaponry to hotspots around the world, told a Senate subcommittee that MANPADS "are the most serious threat to our large and slow-flying air mobility aircraft. These systems are lethal, affordable, easy to use, and difficult to track and counter."
Robertson has good reason for worry. Despite the fact that some military planes carry sophisticated sensors to detect a MANPADS attack, and can deploy countermeasures to help defend against them, 12 of the 29 aircraft lost during the Gulf War were lost to MANPADS attacks, a recent RAND Institute study noted. Civilian aircraft are virtually defenseless in the face of an antiaircraft missile attack.
Although loath to discuss this threat publicly, officials in a variety of federal agencies have been aware of the danger for decades.
"Probably my greatest concern, every day, is the threat posed by the increasing global proliferation of man-portable air defense systems or MANPADS," Gen. Robertson told the Senate Armed Forces Committee last May. "We know that MANPADS are available and are likely in the hands of our terrorist adversaries."
Both the State Department and the Congressional Research Service have drawn the same conclusion. In remarks before the International Rescue Committee in 1998, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warned, "We are also pressing to conclude an agreement to control the export of shoulder-fired missiles, which too many terrorist groups, criminal syndicates and narco-trafficking organizations possess." In a 1999 report to Congress, the Congressional Research Service offered what is perhaps the most ominous missive yet -- that it is "highly likely" that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terror network have acquired MANPADS.
If so, bin Laden and al-Qaida wouldn't be alone. At least 27 guerrilla and terrorist groups already have access to MANPADS, a recent report in Jane's Defense Review alleged. "It is logical to assume that bin Laden's al-Qaida network is in possession of additional MANPADS. If this is true, then al-Qaida represents the most significant threat to international civil aviation. Given bin Laden's specific threats against U.S. citizens, this threat is especially relevant with regard to U.S.-owned airlines," the Jane's report concluded.
Others believe attacks on American carriers would most likely happen abroad. "Given the porosity of our borders, it is possible for such weapons to be smuggled into the U.S.," says William Hoehn Jr., a terrorism expert and professor of international affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "But I would guess that the greater MANPADS danger to U.S. civil aviation is still from takeoffs and landings overseas."
Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown acknowledges the weapons' viable threat to civil aviation, noting that the FAA has "clearly considered it." Brown says the FAA established a special task force on MANPADS. The interagency group -- which included representatives of the Department of Defense, the FAA and the intelligence community -- issued a classified report in 1998. Since that time, despite the government's concerns about antiaircraft missiles, no major changes have been made to either commercial aircraft design or in-flight operations to reduce the risk to travelers from a terrorist intent on shooting down a jet.
Steps can be taken to make commercial aircraft less vulnerable to MANPADS. Gulfstream Aviation, a manufacturer of corporate jets, already offers an infrared countermeasures (IRCM) package as an option on its aircraft. Other measures that can be taken include attaching flare dispensers, installing "sacrificial" nozzles onto engines, locating infrared sources in less vulnerable areas of the aircraft, keeping flight control hydraulics away from likely hit locations, separating fuel systems from likely hit locations and hardening or shielding critical components around infrared sources.
During a classified briefing in 1999, FAA official Raymond Schillinger described the government's research into identifying aircraft and airport vulnerabilities. A subsequent report released by the National Defense Industrial Association, a organization representing major defense corporations, described Schillinger's briefing as "a sobering presentation that described FAA studies regarding the MANPADS threat to commercial and transport aircraft."
The report also noted that "the FAA's research and experimentation indicate a definite need to reduce vulnerability to MANPADS. The small size and portability of these missiles make them a lethal threat, especially in takeoff and landing corridors. Since there have been no confirmed incidents in the U.S., it is difficult to convince aircraft manufacturers and airline companies of the potential cost benefits to making the aircraft less susceptible and less vulnerable to MANPADS ..."
How vulnerable does that leave America's airlines? "If terrorists [in the U.S.] had them, they could use them against buildings, airliners, etc.," warns Ivan Eland, a terrorism expert at the Cato Institute's Defense Policy Studies program. "There is very little the authorities could do about it."
Dr. Todd Curtis, creator of AirSafe.com and a former Air Force officer and Boeing safety analyst, cautions that if there were a "dedicated person (who) wanted to shoot down a plane, there's nothing to stop them."
A handful of major American airliners contacted multiple times during the reporting of this article -- including United, Northwest, Continental, Southwest and others -- refused comment when asked by this reporter about the vulnerability of commercial airliners to missile attacks. Numerous calls to the Airline Pilots Association went unreturned.
Peter Foster, spokesman for the Air Canada Pilots Association, was less reserved. The danger of a MANPADS attack, he says, is "a constant threat to the air system, no doubt about it." Foster also stated that this danger "has not been considered in (commercial) aircraft design."
MANPADS missile systems first gained widespread fame in the war between Afghanistan and the former Soviet Union. During that conflict, Soviet forces were running roughshod over Afghan defenders until the United States began supplying the anti-Soviet mujahedin with Stinger missiles. These MANPADS have been credited with turning the tide in that conflict against the Russians. Of the more than 900 stingers supplied to the mujahedin, many were never fired and remain in the arsenals of various groups in Afghanistan, despite a reported $55 million CIA effort to retrieve them.
Many of the Stingers have fallen into the hands of the Taliban, which has long been secreting bin Laden. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers last month estimated that the Taliban possesses between 200 and 300 MANPADS.
The security threat is not limited to regions where MANPADS are traded on the black market. They also represent a possible danger inside the U.S. After undertaking a comprehensive inspection of U.S. military storage depots, the General Accounting Office concluded that inventory control of military MANPADS stockpiles is so poor that hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of the weapons are unaccounted for.
The GAO report raised another serious question about the safeguarding of America's Stinger stockpile. During the Gulf War, citizens of other countries were involved in the transport of U.S. Stingers on unguarded trucks. One Army official quoted by the GAO said that it would be "pure luck" if none of the missiles were lost. "Lax military oversight (has left) these missiles, which are in demand by terrorists and drug dealers, vulnerable to threat," the GAO concluded in its report.
In addition to the U.S.-supplied Stingers in Afghanistan, newer and more sophisticated MANPADS are now being produced by former Warsaw Pact nations. All kinds of MANPADS have been flowing into the world's underground arms markets, where their black market cost is under $100,000 -- well within the reach of many deep-pocketed terrorist groups.
In the mid-1990s, the U.S. became so concerned with the proliferation of MANPADS that it lobbied hard for the adoption of global export controls. As a result of the campaign, the U.S. and other countries adopted the Wassenaar Arrangement. Though it does not restrict the sale of MANPADS, Wassenaar does promote the "transparency" of arms sales as a way to curb inappropriate transfers of weapons.
"We put the lid on the box, but before we did, a lot of them (MANPADS) got out of the box," a State Department official who asked not to be named concedes.
But Wassenaar's greatest weakness lies in its inability to thwart black-market sales. "Many countries besides the U.S. have manufactured MANPADS, including Russia (from former Soviet designs), France, Germany, the U.K. and others," says Georgia Tech's Hoehn. "The former Soviet Union sold them widely to most of its client states, including Iran and Iraq -- as we did to our allies and to the Afghan rebels. I suspect they are almost as readily available on the 'secondary arms markets' as land mines, only more expensive," he says.
Even if MANPADS are only sold to legitimate governments with the intention of their being used for self-defense, there is no guarantee that they will remain secure. In 1998, soldiers in the former Soviet republic of Georgia staged an uprising against the government of Eduard Shevardnadze and seized a cache of the shoulder-fired missiles. Whether by stealth or force of arms, if one is determined to obtain the missiles, they are available -- and they are small enough for a terrorist to easily smuggle into any country, including the United States.
We've already had close calls.
Federal law enforcement agencies have recently arrested a handful of people trying to smuggle MANPADS in and out of the United States in high-profile cases. Two of the most recent events occurred near Miami. In 1997, a group of smugglers from the former Soviet Union was arrested for attempting to ship a load of MANPADS into the U.S. from Bulgaria. When federal agents arrested the men in Florida, fortunately, the missiles were still in Bulgaria.
More recently, on June 12, federal officials arrested two men in an arms deal sting operation -- an Egyptian and a Pakistani, both from New Jersey -- in a warehouse in West Palm Beach, Fla., on charges that they intended to export a wide variety of sophisticated weaponry, including American-made Stingers. The day of their arrest, the two suspects inspected a MANPADS missile at the warehouse and allegedly expressed interest in selling missiles to a foreign country. Later, an attorney for the Egyptian man at the center of the case, Diaa Mohsen, quoted in the Palm Beach Post, said the weapons would most likely have gone to the Republic of Congo or Pakistan.
Although law enforcement officials have had success in stopping the import of MANPADS into the U.S., it may only be a matter of time before terrorists outsmart officials. A recent Rand Institute study suggested that if terrorists took their cue from drug smugglers along the porous U.S. border, the future could be grim.
"Hundreds of thousands of people cross the U.S. border illegally every year, and individual drug shipments into the country are often as large as tens of tons," said the Rand study. "There is no reason to believe that a sufficiently motivated adversary could not duplicate the accomplishments of immigrants and drug smugglers. Indeed, a nation or terrorist group might hire smugglers for their expertise." In theory, they could smuggle weapons as easily as the tons of cocaine they bring in every year.
When asked about the potential threat of smuggling identified in the Rand report, U.S. Customs Service spokesman Kevin Bell conceded: "More (drugs) get in than we can guess, and I would think that would be the same situation [with respect to MANPADS]."
The White House, meanwhile, recently ushered a major package of security measures through Congress. But President Bush's own spokespeople admit that those measures will not eliminate the risk posed by MANPADS to air travelers. When asked by Salon what steps the White House is taking to reduce the threat of missile attacks, spokesman Ken Lisaius referred to comments made previously by press secretary Ari Fleischer. "Ari stated that the threat (to travelers) had been diminished, not that the situation is threat-free," Lisaius said.
Dr. Robert Pfaltzgraff Jr., a professor of international security studies at Tufts University's Fletcher School, warns that the threat is the logical outcome of the global proliferation of MANPADS. "We should not discount the possibility that they are in the United States and may be used," he cautions.
"We're in deep trouble."
About the writer: Paul J. Caffera is a Rochester, N.Y., freelance writer.
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