U.S. pilots allowed to carry guns.
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I would imagine that Glaser safety slugs in a larger caliber would be the ammunition of choice. These are frangible bullet casings filled with lead powder or shot, designed to shatter on impact with solid objects, but still reliably stop an agressor.
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Tripower455, I'm perfectly aware of the day to day decisions made by pilots (please check my profile), sometimes in difficult circumstances. Those circumstances are drastically different from the split-second judgement needed to "lawfully" shoot someone, even if prior warning of a possible cockpit intruder is given by cabin crew.
I have had a concealed carry permit my entire adult life. I have been faced with the decision whether or not to take my weapon out twice. Both times I was able to remove myself from harms way prior to actually drawing it. I can say with authority, that the go/no go decision when losing an engine just prior to V-1 requires very similar split second judgement.
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I am appalled at the position being taken by most of the "European" respondents to this thread. You lot appear to be more than willing to let a terrorist come into the cockpit and take over the plane and kill everyone on it!! 
What do you intend to do - tell Mr. Ben Linen that you "want to talk this situation over"?? The "talking" will be your very imminent death and subsequently the death of all others on the plane when it crashes.
Don't you understand - when a person comes onto the flight deck uninvited it only means somebody other than the pilot is wanting to fly that plane for their purposes. As an SLF I am unwilling to let that happen although it appears you lot are MORE THAN WILLING to let it happen.
On american Frequent Flyer bbs it is more or less agreed now that SLFs will rise up to take on the cockpit invader anyway we can. Bare hands; with blankets or pillows, whatever. At least we pax are going to defend our lives because we clearly understand that you do [/b]NOT[/b] "discuss" things with cockpit invaders regardless. If some of us die, we are willing to take that risk if it means that the rest of the plane lands safely later. Didn't UA-93 have any meaning for you??
Decompression - bah humbug! A single 40 caliber hole is NOT going to result in a blowout. I don't care what caliber of handgun the flightdeck has, just that they have one or more. As I said earlier, I worry a lot more about explosive devices ala PanAm.
I fly first class almost all the time. If I see anyone trying to get into the flightdeck I am leaving my seat as fast as possible to "discuss" the situation MY WAY with that person!!!!
'nuf said ? ? ?
Tripower455 - more power to you. I will fly with you anytime.
dAAvid -
ps - I have re-read this twice and I do not want to make any changes to it. What it says is what I feel from reading the posts on this thread.
What do you intend to do - tell Mr. Ben Linen that you "want to talk this situation over"?? The "talking" will be your very imminent death and subsequently the death of all others on the plane when it crashes.Don't you understand - when a person comes onto the flight deck uninvited it only means somebody other than the pilot is wanting to fly that plane for their purposes. As an SLF I am unwilling to let that happen although it appears you lot are MORE THAN WILLING to let it happen.
On american Frequent Flyer bbs it is more or less agreed now that SLFs will rise up to take on the cockpit invader anyway we can. Bare hands; with blankets or pillows, whatever. At least we pax are going to defend our lives because we clearly understand that you do [/b]NOT[/b] "discuss" things with cockpit invaders regardless. If some of us die, we are willing to take that risk if it means that the rest of the plane lands safely later. Didn't UA-93 have any meaning for you??
Decompression - bah humbug! A single 40 caliber hole is NOT going to result in a blowout. I don't care what caliber of handgun the flightdeck has, just that they have one or more. As I said earlier, I worry a lot more about explosive devices ala PanAm.
I fly first class almost all the time. If I see anyone trying to get into the flightdeck I am leaving my seat as fast as possible to "discuss" the situation MY WAY with that person!!!!
'nuf said ? ? ?
Tripower455 - more power to you. I will fly with you anytime.
dAAvid -
ps - I have re-read this twice and I do not want to make any changes to it. What it says is what I feel from reading the posts on this thread.
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In fact the new legislation for Enhanced Security Measures does not allow handguns in the cockpit. The media has been quick to say that pilots will be allowed to arm themselves, but the FAA has been directed to "develop procedures and authorize equipment for pilots and other members of the flight crew to use to defend an aircraft against acts of criminal violence or aircraft piracy." The FAA will not allow pilots to carry guns, but they will allow a Tazer or mace to be required equipment in the cockpit. You will never see the FAA allow pilots to carry guns. Period.
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Surely if the terrorist cannot make it onto the flight deck in the first placethen there is no need for the firearm anyway?
If the supposed steel doors get installed and are locked form the flight deck side without the flight attendants having the ability to open them then if a hijack did take place the plane could be landed safely.
This obviously relies on the crew keeping the door locked and not divng up the lfight deck no-matter what is going on 'up back'. If any pilots feels there are circumstances that the door would be opened then there should not be a firearm on deck as Uncle Binny has now just acquired it for his own use!!!!
AA SLF - we are not prepared to let it happen, but why people seem to see firearms as the be-all-and-end-all of the debate beats me!
Someone mentioned earlier about allowing all passengers to carry firearms on board and that way make anyone who has any inclination of taking the plane over think twice about it first. How long will it take a group to realise that all they have to do is check in a reasonable sized group to be to overpower the pax anyway - after all they have just legitimately checked in a large amount of firepower as cabin luggage!!
Get the flight deck physically secured from forced entry and this whole argument dies in the water!!!!
Julian.
If the supposed steel doors get installed and are locked form the flight deck side without the flight attendants having the ability to open them then if a hijack did take place the plane could be landed safely.
This obviously relies on the crew keeping the door locked and not divng up the lfight deck no-matter what is going on 'up back'. If any pilots feels there are circumstances that the door would be opened then there should not be a firearm on deck as Uncle Binny has now just acquired it for his own use!!!!
AA SLF - we are not prepared to let it happen, but why people seem to see firearms as the be-all-and-end-all of the debate beats me!
Someone mentioned earlier about allowing all passengers to carry firearms on board and that way make anyone who has any inclination of taking the plane over think twice about it first. How long will it take a group to realise that all they have to do is check in a reasonable sized group to be to overpower the pax anyway - after all they have just legitimately checked in a large amount of firepower as cabin luggage!!
Get the flight deck physically secured from forced entry and this whole argument dies in the water!!!!
Julian.
Pukka PPRuNer!!
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AA SLF:
The point that I was making is that non-technically minded pax are going to think that guns will cause explosive decompressions because thats what Hollywood has been telling them for 30 years!! I am sure that wouldn't happen, but you try telling that to 'em.....
Suppose a pax gets hit in the crossfire and sues.....
I do agree with you that anyone shouting "Hi! Jack!"
is gonna get the crap knocked out of them!!
But, again, how is the Capt going to restore order when 200+ people's survival instincts have just clicked in....?
.....Bags 1st punch/kick!!!
The point that I was making is that non-technically minded pax are going to think that guns will cause explosive decompressions because thats what Hollywood has been telling them for 30 years!! I am sure that wouldn't happen, but you try telling that to 'em.....
Suppose a pax gets hit in the crossfire and sues.....
I do agree with you that anyone shouting "Hi! Jack!"
is gonna get the crap knocked out of them!!But, again, how is the Capt going to restore order when 200+ people's survival instincts have just clicked in....?
.....Bags 1st punch/kick!!!
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727boy - WELCOME to Pprune
I simply do not agree with your feeling that the FAA will never allow a handgun in the cockpit in the future. Too much precedence for this from the past.
Julian - there is an old saying about "where there is a will, there is a way". If you can not think of ways to take down a steel door between the cabin and the cockpit then I can. It is not that difficult of a thing to do at all. Certain types of Special Forces have training, and the materials, in just that sort of thing. Think about it.
A handgun is a very "final" solution to forced entry. I just want flight crew to have every opportunity to stop cockpit invasion as a last resort. Why y'all don't want to give flight deck that weapon of last resort baffles me no end. Fire axe and Taser are fine, but only the axe can be considered "final" and it involves a very close-up range.
Passengers with firearms? NO - I do not agree with that at all. There should only be a handgun on the Air Marshall and then however many in the cockpit. No need at all for any other handguns on a plane ever.
In the end, there is no such thing as a "for sure" physically secure flight deck (see above). That is why I would allow cockpit handguns.
swashplate - Let them sue! Most American pax would probably testify against that person in court! If we (slf) are ready to give our all to stop a takeover, then if we get hurt in the process - too bad. We have acccepted this may occur already. The pax that sues would be one that has not accepted the responsibility to "defend" the plane and thus will be no friend of the other pax who did rise to the occasion.
The cabin will quiet down all by itself AFTER the pax get done with the culprit!!
dAAvid -
I simply do not agree with your feeling that the FAA will never allow a handgun in the cockpit in the future. Too much precedence for this from the past.
Julian - there is an old saying about "where there is a will, there is a way". If you can not think of ways to take down a steel door between the cabin and the cockpit then I can. It is not that difficult of a thing to do at all. Certain types of Special Forces have training, and the materials, in just that sort of thing. Think about it.
A handgun is a very "final" solution to forced entry. I just want flight crew to have every opportunity to stop cockpit invasion as a last resort. Why y'all don't want to give flight deck that weapon of last resort baffles me no end. Fire axe and Taser are fine, but only the axe can be considered "final" and it involves a very close-up range.
Passengers with firearms? NO - I do not agree with that at all. There should only be a handgun on the Air Marshall and then however many in the cockpit. No need at all for any other handguns on a plane ever.
In the end, there is no such thing as a "for sure" physically secure flight deck (see above). That is why I would allow cockpit handguns.
swashplate - Let them sue! Most American pax would probably testify against that person in court! If we (slf) are ready to give our all to stop a takeover, then if we get hurt in the process - too bad. We have acccepted this may occur already. The pax that sues would be one that has not accepted the responsibility to "defend" the plane and thus will be no friend of the other pax who did rise to the occasion.
The cabin will quiet down all by itself AFTER the pax get done with the culprit!!
dAAvid -
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AA We are talking about a specifically designed door here, dont forget combined with the bulkhead as well. I think if you are talking about them blowing the door off, bearing in mind there would be nothing PAX side as it would have to be designed for opening from flight deck side only, then the explosion would prob kill all the flight deck crew anyway! I think if special forces take the door down you wont know anything about it anyway to be honest as you will be flat on your back (Sorry but cruel truth!)
I think you just have the mindset that you want a gun and you arent going to take no for an answer despite any alternatives that are offered. No matter what security and precautions are given...
Julian.
I think you just have the mindset that you want a gun and you arent going to take no for an answer despite any alternatives that are offered. No matter what security and precautions are given...
Julian.
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Filmaker said:
"If we are going to arm Pilots (and I think we should) why not use the technology developed a few years ago in making sure that the only person that can fire a particular weapon is the registered owner of that weapon. If I recall there were more than a few systems that detected the hand print/pressure, thumb print etc of a registered owner of a weapon and only allowed that person to fire that weapon. If the weapon was taken away or the owner disabled, the weapon would not fire. this seems to be a simple solution."
Sorry, but that technology simply doesn't exist. Several companies have tried various concepts. None have gone past the fatally flawed prototype stage. Colt tried to develop a firearm that had receiver in it. The officer would have to wear a small transmitter on his belt. The gun would not fire if it was pointed towards the officer or more than X feet away from the officer. Colt executives tried to demonstrate it at a trade show. Even under perfect conditions, the prototype failed. Since it relied on a radio signal, I imagine it would be possible to jam electronically. Two points of failure, two sets of batteries to go bad. No thanks.
Another idea has been the fingerprint recognition system. Such a system is rather more complex than you might expect at first. The system must be able to be used with either hand. And it has to work even though you might not grip the gun exactly the same way each time -- that is, your thumb might not be in the exact same spot. It has to work even if your hands are sweaty or bloody. A couple companies did some research on this. Nothing ever came of it.
The one and only device on the market that works is rather low-tech (surprise, surprise). It works with magnetic rings that the officer must wear. It's called the MagnaTrigger and it can only be installed on revolvers. Rick Devoid is a gunsmith, and sole proprietor of Tarnhelm supply company. You can see information about it on his web site:
http://www.tarnhelm.com/magna-trigge...ty/magna1.html
If such devices really worked, I'm sure that the many police agencies in the US would jump on the bandwagon. They haven't because outside of the Magnatrigger, no such device exists. It's not an easy problem. Handguns are a rather challenging environment for such devices. They are small, get exposed to lots of shocks, get flooded with oil and solvents, and often are poorly maintained and abused. And they have to work everytime.
Regarding the ammunition used, it's called frangible ammunition. This isn't anything top-secret -- any web search on frangible ammunition will bring up lots of information about it. It was originally developed to reduce airborne lead at training ranges, but is also used to reduce the risk of damage to delicate structures. Most of the large manufacturers in the USA offer a line of frangible ammunition, for example:
http://www.remington.com/2001/am_dislff.htm
http://www.janes.com/security/law_en...-2001_02.shtml
http://www.triton-ammo.com/press/CQFrangible.html
http://www.winchester.com/law/catalo...rgy=on&traj=on
OFBSLF
Firearms Instructor certified by MA State Police
"If we are going to arm Pilots (and I think we should) why not use the technology developed a few years ago in making sure that the only person that can fire a particular weapon is the registered owner of that weapon. If I recall there were more than a few systems that detected the hand print/pressure, thumb print etc of a registered owner of a weapon and only allowed that person to fire that weapon. If the weapon was taken away or the owner disabled, the weapon would not fire. this seems to be a simple solution."
Sorry, but that technology simply doesn't exist. Several companies have tried various concepts. None have gone past the fatally flawed prototype stage. Colt tried to develop a firearm that had receiver in it. The officer would have to wear a small transmitter on his belt. The gun would not fire if it was pointed towards the officer or more than X feet away from the officer. Colt executives tried to demonstrate it at a trade show. Even under perfect conditions, the prototype failed. Since it relied on a radio signal, I imagine it would be possible to jam electronically. Two points of failure, two sets of batteries to go bad. No thanks.
Another idea has been the fingerprint recognition system. Such a system is rather more complex than you might expect at first. The system must be able to be used with either hand. And it has to work even though you might not grip the gun exactly the same way each time -- that is, your thumb might not be in the exact same spot. It has to work even if your hands are sweaty or bloody. A couple companies did some research on this. Nothing ever came of it.
The one and only device on the market that works is rather low-tech (surprise, surprise). It works with magnetic rings that the officer must wear. It's called the MagnaTrigger and it can only be installed on revolvers. Rick Devoid is a gunsmith, and sole proprietor of Tarnhelm supply company. You can see information about it on his web site:
http://www.tarnhelm.com/magna-trigge...ty/magna1.html
If such devices really worked, I'm sure that the many police agencies in the US would jump on the bandwagon. They haven't because outside of the Magnatrigger, no such device exists. It's not an easy problem. Handguns are a rather challenging environment for such devices. They are small, get exposed to lots of shocks, get flooded with oil and solvents, and often are poorly maintained and abused. And they have to work everytime.
Regarding the ammunition used, it's called frangible ammunition. This isn't anything top-secret -- any web search on frangible ammunition will bring up lots of information about it. It was originally developed to reduce airborne lead at training ranges, but is also used to reduce the risk of damage to delicate structures. Most of the large manufacturers in the USA offer a line of frangible ammunition, for example:
http://www.remington.com/2001/am_dislff.htm
http://www.janes.com/security/law_en...-2001_02.shtml
http://www.triton-ammo.com/press/CQFrangible.html
http://www.winchester.com/law/catalo...rgy=on&traj=on
OFBSLF
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isn't the whole idea to keep guns off the aircraft! i understand the need for personnel protection and cockpit security - but pilots are pilots first and foremost. If a deterent/force is required to maintain this, then sky marshalls are the only way. but keep weapons under the strict control of ONLY the marshalls who would in my view have to under go heavy duty retraining including simulations and psycometric training every 60 days.
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This was always going to be the most emotive issue in the nations response to 911.And I say nation because it is primarily an American predicament.The Europeans negative response is understandable if you consider that it wasnt their pilots who were summarily ejected from the cockpit,had their hands tied and forced to watch the demise of their ship,crew and pax.If they had,perhaps their response would be somewhat different.
The possible dangers in arming pilots(and there are some I agree) are simply outweighed by the need to ensure that the fate of the pilots dependents are never again relinquished from his/her control in such an atrocious fashion.
The concerns seem to be threefold:
i)That the firearms will be commandeered by would-be hijackers
ii)That the pilot will misuse the firearm
iii)That the use of firearms in flight will cause other scenarios of equal gravity to that of a hijack.
I think that (i) can be addressed by good training and the acceptance of sky marshalls as the first line of defence and buffer to the flight deck.
The dangers of (ii) are equally valid but less transparent in that you can train a pilot to shoot straight in 2 weeks but you cant teach good judgement in that time.However,this too can be addressed successfully if we accept that pilots already possess good judgement and that the use of the firearm is a last ditch option and its use subject to the ship being in
dire peril.
(iii)is very subjective and depends on your POV.I cannot imagine any scenario worse than 9/11.
The possible dangers in arming pilots(and there are some I agree) are simply outweighed by the need to ensure that the fate of the pilots dependents are never again relinquished from his/her control in such an atrocious fashion.
The concerns seem to be threefold:
i)That the firearms will be commandeered by would-be hijackers
ii)That the pilot will misuse the firearm
iii)That the use of firearms in flight will cause other scenarios of equal gravity to that of a hijack.
I think that (i) can be addressed by good training and the acceptance of sky marshalls as the first line of defence and buffer to the flight deck.
The dangers of (ii) are equally valid but less transparent in that you can train a pilot to shoot straight in 2 weeks but you cant teach good judgement in that time.However,this too can be addressed successfully if we accept that pilots already possess good judgement and that the use of the firearm is a last ditch option and its use subject to the ship being in
dire peril.
(iii)is very subjective and depends on your POV.I cannot imagine any scenario worse than 9/11.
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Ok, So assuming US airlines go with the idea of permitting their pilots to carry handguns, can someone explain to me just how they expect to use them.
If you are faced with the kind of nutcases who carried out the hijackings on Sept 11th, they will be so psyched up as the burst through the flightdeck door, knives in hand, ready to cut the throats of both pilots as swiftly as possible, that I don't believe even the fittest pilot will be able to react rapidly enough to get his gun out, let alone discharge it.
What is needed instead, is a complete and radical overall of airport serurity, particularly in the US, to ensure that no one, and I mean no one, is able to get anywhere near an aircraft with any kind of offensive weapon.
The most effective defense is that provided by a layered stategy. Passenger screening at check-in, effective passenger search procedures before getting to the lounge plus further random checks as passengers board the aircraft. In addiition, armed sky marshalls on all flights and a really secure cockpit door and closed circuit TV to see what's going down in the cabin.
In my view, speaking as an airline pilot who has been in this business for 35 years, armed pilots are not now, or ever will be, the answer to this problem, effective layered of security however is.
If you are faced with the kind of nutcases who carried out the hijackings on Sept 11th, they will be so psyched up as the burst through the flightdeck door, knives in hand, ready to cut the throats of both pilots as swiftly as possible, that I don't believe even the fittest pilot will be able to react rapidly enough to get his gun out, let alone discharge it.
What is needed instead, is a complete and radical overall of airport serurity, particularly in the US, to ensure that no one, and I mean no one, is able to get anywhere near an aircraft with any kind of offensive weapon.
The most effective defense is that provided by a layered stategy. Passenger screening at check-in, effective passenger search procedures before getting to the lounge plus further random checks as passengers board the aircraft. In addiition, armed sky marshalls on all flights and a really secure cockpit door and closed circuit TV to see what's going down in the cabin.
In my view, speaking as an airline pilot who has been in this business for 35 years, armed pilots are not now, or ever will be, the answer to this problem, effective layered of security however is.
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Packs At last!! Someone who is seeing sense! Get the fligtdeck security sorted and you have no need for firearms. If it all kicks off then the crew are secure on the flightdeck and acn get the aircraft down.
Caulfield You may want to rethink your comments about the fact we dont care over here! It may not have been our pilots flying the aircraft but BOTH lost loved ones in the act.
Julian.
Caulfield You may want to rethink your comments about the fact we dont care over here! It may not have been our pilots flying the aircraft but BOTH lost loved ones in the act.
Julian.
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The Europeans negative response is understandable if you consider that it wasnt their pilots who were summarily ejected from the cockpit,had their hands tied and forced to watch the demise of their ship,crew and pax.If they had,perhaps their response would be somewhat different.
As to our negative response to the arming issue I see two reasons for our different points of view:
1 Gun in particular are an emotive issue over there and not really on this side of the Atlantic. That does not concern us.
2 I think the basic operating ethos of crews is slightly different. In dealing with responsibility we have moved away from the solo DIY approach to a delegate 'let him/her do it' style.( This may be down to your more military schoolled crews ).
In essence we would rather everyone pulled their weight from check-in to boarding. We wear enough hats as it is in this job without adding Policeman and Executioner to them!
[ 22 November 2001: Message edited by: westman ]
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Guns in the cockpit? Pilots carrying guns? Nonsense! Any professional pilot who subscribes to this notion has forgotten the first rule of being an aviator ... FLY THE AIRPLANE. Pilots have no business leaving their post to quell an uprising in the cabin. Better to make the cockpit impregnable so the pilots can carry out their primary responsibility ... FLY THE AIRPLANE.
Here is a better plan. Let's train the flight attendents to carry out a sky marshal's job. Let the flight attendents carry guns. Train flight attendents to use firearms.
Here is a better plan. Let's train the flight attendents to carry out a sky marshal's job. Let the flight attendents carry guns. Train flight attendents to use firearms.
Union Goon
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Dick,
The guns are not for going into the cabin, its to keep people from the cabin out of the cockpit.
Guns in the cabin would be a bad idea, because those could be commondeered and fired into the cockpit. However, guns in the cockpit could be pulled out in response to an assault on the cockpit door and anyone that comes through the locked door could be reliably dispatched with minimal training.
As to security keeping knives off of airplanes, they can't keep knives out of prisons where the prisoners have no rights are searched (strip, cavity search etc) on a regular basis. If you can't keep knives out of prisons where you have total control over the inmates, you are kidding yourself if you think you are ever gonna be able to keep them off of aircraft. Furthermore, entire prisons have been commondeered by the prisoners (attica for example) which is much harder to do than commandeer a plane.
The LAST line of defense will always be the cockpit. Does anyone really think that things would have been worse on 9/11 had the pilots been armed?
Cheers
Wino
The guns are not for going into the cabin, its to keep people from the cabin out of the cockpit.
Guns in the cabin would be a bad idea, because those could be commondeered and fired into the cockpit. However, guns in the cockpit could be pulled out in response to an assault on the cockpit door and anyone that comes through the locked door could be reliably dispatched with minimal training.
As to security keeping knives off of airplanes, they can't keep knives out of prisons where the prisoners have no rights are searched (strip, cavity search etc) on a regular basis. If you can't keep knives out of prisons where you have total control over the inmates, you are kidding yourself if you think you are ever gonna be able to keep them off of aircraft. Furthermore, entire prisons have been commondeered by the prisoners (attica for example) which is much harder to do than commandeer a plane.
The LAST line of defense will always be the cockpit. Does anyone really think that things would have been worse on 9/11 had the pilots been armed?
Cheers
Wino
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If US pilots are permitted to carry firearms, then I sincerely hope that they are all required to attend training courses on CQBT or Close Quarters Battle Training.
Also, it seems to be IMHO the easist way to get a weapon on board an airliner!
Just my 2.5p worth(That and another quid or so will get you a coffee and a sticky bun!)
Also, it seems to be IMHO the easist way to get a weapon on board an airliner!
Just my 2.5p worth(That and another quid or so will get you a coffee and a sticky bun!)
Grandpa Aerotart
In a former life I spent years, over 13, carrying a concealed firearm for self protection, and occasionally had reason to ‘unconceal it’. I had good reason as I was shot at, even while airborne, 6 or 8 times! I have seen friends axed to the ground by natives, believe me I have no troubling dreams about having used it!
I relate this only so you will realise that I am not some lefty tree hugging anti gun type!
I personally feel that Americans have no other way of reacting to such a threat other than to recreate a John Wayne movie, it’s just not in their national psyche. God knows how many decades of every American hero solving all the woes of the world with a handgun has seen to that. America has a gun culture that is essentially unique, and as someone said they get pretty emotional about it! It started with Hollywood rewriting the history of the ‘wild west’ and is propagated with this myth that their constitution guarantees them the ‘right’ to ‘bear arms’, it does not!
Nothing will stop a dedicated nut from boarding an airliner.
All this BS bravado and stupid, politically motivated, bizarre ‘extra security’ is doing is scaring the SLF away in droves!
The war on terrorism is ensuring that there will be plenty of people to attack the US again in the future, although you could bet next years wages that it will not be the same as 911! This is NOT to say that the perpetrators of this obscenity should not be hunted down and punished, just that doing it quietly would have been a better idea. Once again completely impossible given the American psyche.
Gentlemen you are fighting the last war!
And anybody who believes the American line that this was not an attack on the US but rather an attack on the free world is kidding themselves! Yes it has affected us all but make no mistake, it was an attack on America and we are just collateral damage!
Yes there needs to be extra security at airports, yes there is an argument for armed sky marshalls (although I would be uncomfortable with anyone other than highly trained currently serving Special Forces). There is no good argument for arming all pilots. There is definitely no good argument for arming Cabin crew. Allowing armed pax just defeated your extra security measures in one fell swoop!
What really concerns me is that US leadership has divided the world into two camps, “either for us or agin us” !
The Americans DON’T wear the white hat in the world, they are guilty of PLENTY of nasty terrorist actions world wide. When they stop trying to reorganise the world into their idea of how it should be and start behaving like good helpful neighbours, instead of thugs, then maybe no-one will want to attack them anymore!
I'm anything but anti American, but if you don't fix the root problem you are damning your children to a helluva existence!
Chuck
Backyard Terrorism
The US Has Been Training Terrorists At a Camp in Georgia for Years - And It's Still At It
by George Monbiot
"If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents," George Bush announced on the day he began bombing Afghanistan, "they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril." I'm glad he said "any government", as there's one which, though it has yet to be identified as a sponsor of terrorism, requires his urgent attention.
For the past 55 years it has been running a terrorist training camp, whose victims massively outnumber the people killed by the attack on New York, the embassy bombings and the other atrocities laid, rightly or wrongly, at al-Qaida's door. The camp is called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or Whisc. It is based in Fort Benning, Georgia, and it is funded by Mr Bush's government.
Until January this year, Whisc was called the "School of the Americas", or SOA. Since 1946, SOA has trained more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers and policemen. Among its graduates are many of the continent's most notorious torturers, mass murderers, dictators and state terrorists. As hundreds of pages of documentation compiled by the pressure group SOA Watch show, Latin America has been ripped apart by its alumni.
In June this year, Colonel Byron Lima Estrada, once a student at the school, was convicted in Guatemala City of murdering Bishop Juan Gerardi in 1998. Gerardi was killed because he had helped to write a report on the atrocities committed by Guatemala's D-2, the military intelligence agency run by Lima Estrada with the help of two other SOA graduates. D-2 coordinated the "anti-insurgency" campaign which obliterated 448 Mayan Indian villages, and murdered tens of thousands of their people. Forty per cent of the cabinet ministers who served the genocidal regimes of Lucas Garcia, Rios Montt and Mejia Victores studied at the School of the Americas.
In 1993, the United Nations truth commission on El Salvador named the army officers who had committed the worst atrocities of the civil war. Two-thirds of them had been trained at the School of the Americas. Among them were Roberto D'Aubuisson, the leader of El Salvador's death squads; the men who killed Archbishop Oscar Romero; and 19 of the 26 soldiers who murdered the Jesuit priests in 1989. In Chile, the school's graduates ran both Augusto Pinochet's secret police and his three principal concentration camps. One of them helped to murder Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit in Washington DC in 1976.
Argentina's dictators Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri, Panama's Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos, Peru's Juan Velasco Alvarado and Ecuador's Guillermo Rodriguez all benefited from the school's instruction. So did the leader of the Grupo Colina death squad in Fujimori's Peru; four of the five officers who ran the infamous Battalion 3-16 in Honduras (which controlled the death squads there in the 1980s) and the commander responsible for the 1994 Ocosingo massacre in Mexico.
All this, the school's defenders insist, is ancient history. But SOA graduates are also involved in the dirty war now being waged, with US support, in Colombia. In 1999 the US State Department's report on human rights named two SOA graduates as the murderers of the peace commissioner, Alex Lopera. Last year, Human Rights Watch revealed that seven former pupils are running paramilitary groups there and have commissioned kidnappings, disappearances, murders and massacres. In February this year an SOA graduate in Colombia was convicted of complicity in the torture and killing of 30 peasants by paramilitaries. The school is now drawing more of its students from Colombia than from any other country.
The FBI defines terrorism as "violent acts... intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a government, or affect the conduct of a government", which is a precise description of the activities of SOA's graduates. But how can we be sure that their alma mater has had any part in this? Well, in 1996, the US government was forced to release seven of the school's training manuals. Among other top tips for terrorists, they recommended blackmail, torture, execution and the arrest of witnesses' relatives.
Last year, partly as a result of the campaign run by SOA Watch, several US congressmen tried to shut the school down. They were defeated by 10 votes. Instead, the House of Representatives voted to close it and then immediately reopen it under a different name. So, just as Windscale turned into Sellafield in the hope of parrying public memory, the School of the Americas washed its hands of the past by renaming itself Whisc. As the school's Colonel Mark Morgan informed the Department of Defense just before the vote in Congress: "Some of your bosses have told us that they can't support anything with the name 'School of the Americas' on it. Our proposal addresses this concern. It changes the name." Paul Coverdell, the Georgia senator who had fought to save the school, told the papers that the changes were "basically cosmetic".
But visit Whisc's website and you'll see that the School of the Americas has been all but excised from the record. Even the page marked "History" fails to mention it. Whisc's courses, it tells us, "cover a broad spectrum of relevant areas, such as operational planning for peace operations; disaster relief; civil-military operations; tactical planning and execution of counter drug operations".
Several pages describe its human rights initiatives. But, though they account for almost the entire training program, combat and commando techniques, counter-insurgency and interrogation aren't mentioned. Nor is the fact that Whisc's "peace" and "human rights" options were also offered by SOA in the hope of appeasing Congress and preserving its budget: but hardly any of the students chose to take them.
We can't expect this terrorist training camp to reform itself: after all, it refuses even to acknowledge that it has a past, let alone to learn from it. So, given that the evidence linking the school to continuing atrocities in Latin America is rather stronger than the evidence linking the al-Qaida training camps to the attack on New York, what should we do about the "evil-doers" in Fort Benning, Georgia?
Well, we could urge our governments to apply full diplomatic pressure, and to seek the extradition of the school's commanders for trial on charges of complicity in crimes against humanity. Alternatively, we could demand that our governments attack the United States, bombing its military installations, cities and airports in the hope of overthrowing its unelected government and replacing it with a new administration overseen by the UN. In case this proposal proves unpopular with the American people, we could win their hearts and minds by dropping naan bread and dried curry in plastic bags stamped with the Afghan flag.
You object that this prescription is ridiculous, and I agree. But try as I might, I cannot see the moral difference between this course of action and the war now being waged in Afghanistan.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
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I relate this only so you will realise that I am not some lefty tree hugging anti gun type!
I personally feel that Americans have no other way of reacting to such a threat other than to recreate a John Wayne movie, it’s just not in their national psyche. God knows how many decades of every American hero solving all the woes of the world with a handgun has seen to that. America has a gun culture that is essentially unique, and as someone said they get pretty emotional about it! It started with Hollywood rewriting the history of the ‘wild west’ and is propagated with this myth that their constitution guarantees them the ‘right’ to ‘bear arms’, it does not!
Nothing will stop a dedicated nut from boarding an airliner.
All this BS bravado and stupid, politically motivated, bizarre ‘extra security’ is doing is scaring the SLF away in droves!
The war on terrorism is ensuring that there will be plenty of people to attack the US again in the future, although you could bet next years wages that it will not be the same as 911! This is NOT to say that the perpetrators of this obscenity should not be hunted down and punished, just that doing it quietly would have been a better idea. Once again completely impossible given the American psyche.
Gentlemen you are fighting the last war!
And anybody who believes the American line that this was not an attack on the US but rather an attack on the free world is kidding themselves! Yes it has affected us all but make no mistake, it was an attack on America and we are just collateral damage!
Yes there needs to be extra security at airports, yes there is an argument for armed sky marshalls (although I would be uncomfortable with anyone other than highly trained currently serving Special Forces). There is no good argument for arming all pilots. There is definitely no good argument for arming Cabin crew. Allowing armed pax just defeated your extra security measures in one fell swoop!
What really concerns me is that US leadership has divided the world into two camps, “either for us or agin us” !
The Americans DON’T wear the white hat in the world, they are guilty of PLENTY of nasty terrorist actions world wide. When they stop trying to reorganise the world into their idea of how it should be and start behaving like good helpful neighbours, instead of thugs, then maybe no-one will want to attack them anymore!
I'm anything but anti American, but if you don't fix the root problem you are damning your children to a helluva existence!
Chuck
Backyard Terrorism
The US Has Been Training Terrorists At a Camp in Georgia for Years - And It's Still At It
by George Monbiot
"If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents," George Bush announced on the day he began bombing Afghanistan, "they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril." I'm glad he said "any government", as there's one which, though it has yet to be identified as a sponsor of terrorism, requires his urgent attention.
For the past 55 years it has been running a terrorist training camp, whose victims massively outnumber the people killed by the attack on New York, the embassy bombings and the other atrocities laid, rightly or wrongly, at al-Qaida's door. The camp is called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or Whisc. It is based in Fort Benning, Georgia, and it is funded by Mr Bush's government.
Until January this year, Whisc was called the "School of the Americas", or SOA. Since 1946, SOA has trained more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers and policemen. Among its graduates are many of the continent's most notorious torturers, mass murderers, dictators and state terrorists. As hundreds of pages of documentation compiled by the pressure group SOA Watch show, Latin America has been ripped apart by its alumni.
In June this year, Colonel Byron Lima Estrada, once a student at the school, was convicted in Guatemala City of murdering Bishop Juan Gerardi in 1998. Gerardi was killed because he had helped to write a report on the atrocities committed by Guatemala's D-2, the military intelligence agency run by Lima Estrada with the help of two other SOA graduates. D-2 coordinated the "anti-insurgency" campaign which obliterated 448 Mayan Indian villages, and murdered tens of thousands of their people. Forty per cent of the cabinet ministers who served the genocidal regimes of Lucas Garcia, Rios Montt and Mejia Victores studied at the School of the Americas.
In 1993, the United Nations truth commission on El Salvador named the army officers who had committed the worst atrocities of the civil war. Two-thirds of them had been trained at the School of the Americas. Among them were Roberto D'Aubuisson, the leader of El Salvador's death squads; the men who killed Archbishop Oscar Romero; and 19 of the 26 soldiers who murdered the Jesuit priests in 1989. In Chile, the school's graduates ran both Augusto Pinochet's secret police and his three principal concentration camps. One of them helped to murder Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit in Washington DC in 1976.
Argentina's dictators Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri, Panama's Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos, Peru's Juan Velasco Alvarado and Ecuador's Guillermo Rodriguez all benefited from the school's instruction. So did the leader of the Grupo Colina death squad in Fujimori's Peru; four of the five officers who ran the infamous Battalion 3-16 in Honduras (which controlled the death squads there in the 1980s) and the commander responsible for the 1994 Ocosingo massacre in Mexico.
All this, the school's defenders insist, is ancient history. But SOA graduates are also involved in the dirty war now being waged, with US support, in Colombia. In 1999 the US State Department's report on human rights named two SOA graduates as the murderers of the peace commissioner, Alex Lopera. Last year, Human Rights Watch revealed that seven former pupils are running paramilitary groups there and have commissioned kidnappings, disappearances, murders and massacres. In February this year an SOA graduate in Colombia was convicted of complicity in the torture and killing of 30 peasants by paramilitaries. The school is now drawing more of its students from Colombia than from any other country.
The FBI defines terrorism as "violent acts... intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a government, or affect the conduct of a government", which is a precise description of the activities of SOA's graduates. But how can we be sure that their alma mater has had any part in this? Well, in 1996, the US government was forced to release seven of the school's training manuals. Among other top tips for terrorists, they recommended blackmail, torture, execution and the arrest of witnesses' relatives.
Last year, partly as a result of the campaign run by SOA Watch, several US congressmen tried to shut the school down. They were defeated by 10 votes. Instead, the House of Representatives voted to close it and then immediately reopen it under a different name. So, just as Windscale turned into Sellafield in the hope of parrying public memory, the School of the Americas washed its hands of the past by renaming itself Whisc. As the school's Colonel Mark Morgan informed the Department of Defense just before the vote in Congress: "Some of your bosses have told us that they can't support anything with the name 'School of the Americas' on it. Our proposal addresses this concern. It changes the name." Paul Coverdell, the Georgia senator who had fought to save the school, told the papers that the changes were "basically cosmetic".
But visit Whisc's website and you'll see that the School of the Americas has been all but excised from the record. Even the page marked "History" fails to mention it. Whisc's courses, it tells us, "cover a broad spectrum of relevant areas, such as operational planning for peace operations; disaster relief; civil-military operations; tactical planning and execution of counter drug operations".
Several pages describe its human rights initiatives. But, though they account for almost the entire training program, combat and commando techniques, counter-insurgency and interrogation aren't mentioned. Nor is the fact that Whisc's "peace" and "human rights" options were also offered by SOA in the hope of appeasing Congress and preserving its budget: but hardly any of the students chose to take them.
We can't expect this terrorist training camp to reform itself: after all, it refuses even to acknowledge that it has a past, let alone to learn from it. So, given that the evidence linking the school to continuing atrocities in Latin America is rather stronger than the evidence linking the al-Qaida training camps to the attack on New York, what should we do about the "evil-doers" in Fort Benning, Georgia?
Well, we could urge our governments to apply full diplomatic pressure, and to seek the extradition of the school's commanders for trial on charges of complicity in crimes against humanity. Alternatively, we could demand that our governments attack the United States, bombing its military installations, cities and airports in the hope of overthrowing its unelected government and replacing it with a new administration overseen by the UN. In case this proposal proves unpopular with the American people, we could win their hearts and minds by dropping naan bread and dried curry in plastic bags stamped with the Afghan flag.
You object that this prescription is ridiculous, and I agree. But try as I might, I cannot see the moral difference between this course of action and the war now being waged in Afghanistan.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
###