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December 1, 2004

Countdown Until an Air Marshal Explodes...3...2...1...

Note: this is a post recovered from my old blog, before it died of an insufficient backup. Any comments/trackbacks on it have not been brought over, but can be seen with the original. The date is that of the original posting.

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This is just pathetic. I've heard a lot of stupid crap about the air marshal service, and making them wear the same kind of attire (thus, making them easier to target - and me a target for that matter, since I travel on business wearing a suit), is just dumb.

Worse still, though, is that only 1 in 50 flights are apparently covered. I don't expect all flights to be covered - it would be nice but I don't expect it - but this is way too low. Ten per cent would be defensible, but I don't see 2% as being sufficient to deter attacks.

So, given that the numbers are already too small, how about we make it worse by pissing off some of the air marshals we do have. Look, it takes a very special kind of person to be an air marshal. Think about how much you hate flying. Now imagine doing that 3 or 4 times every day, and being alert and ready to act the whole time. It's very, very hard to do, and there aren't that many people who can do it. And some of them are deployed with the military, which also needs that kind of person for some kinds of jobs. So let's go on and make their lives miserable: that's almost guaranteed to work. Or something.

Pathetic.