> airborne. The likely consequence of all of this, should it 
> prove true, is
> that air travel will most likely again be suspended until all 
> of this can be
> sorted out with some degree of assurance.

The threat is even more than that: bin Laden may (or may not) have shot
his wad on this one, but Tuesday morning dozens of
Kaczinsky/McVeigh-class wackos across the nation did the V-8 forehead
slap and said words to the effect of "That was so cool! Why didn't I
think of that!?"

It is incomprehensible to me that a small group, armed with nothing more
than cutting hardware, could gain control of a commercial aircraft in so
short a time. The fact that *four* of them did is the true measure of
the sorry state of our security systems. I suspect that we may finally
get around to implementing some of the ideas that were suggested back in
the '60s and '70s when hijacking was so much in vogue. Yes, those
measures will be expensive, and complying with them will be
inconvenient; I am convinced that the thousands of people buried under
what were WTC 1 and 2 would have been quite willing to pay for a little
inconvenience.

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