I’m not sure I agree. But TPM Reader DR thinks that a lot of the things we’re treating as obvious red flags with the Xmas bomber really aren’t red flags at all …
I have to respond to the line of argumentation made by some of your readers and elsewhere in the blogosphere regarding supposedly missed signals in the underwear bomber case. While I can appreciate that the whole profile may be more telling than the sum of its parts, some of the “warning signs” being cited should not really raise much suspicion. You posted another reader’s list of “warning signs”:
1. Passenger’s name: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
2. One-way ticket from Yemen to Detroit
3. Ticket paid for with $3,000 cash
4. Passenger has no luggage
I’ve flown this very same connection– Amsterdam-Detroit on NW– often for work and I NEVER check any luggage. I know many other travelers who do the same for a number of reasons, including avoiding lost luggage and exiting the airport faster on arrival. I was once given an upgrade to business class on an alternate transatlantic connection when the airline had to resolve a last minute overbooking. I’m not even at Silver status, so I’m sure it was because I had no checked luggage and was easy to move quickly.
People buy one-way tickets for many reasons. Perhaps they haven’t yet decided when they’re returning, are flying out of another city, are returning on a different airline, etc.
Just because most Americans do not pay with cash, this does not mean it is the norm elsewhere.
You shouldn’t be targeted just for a Muslim-sounding name, especially if your destination is Detroit, which has a large Arab population.
Frankly, this is a bunch of misguided Monday morning quarterbacking. There’s gonna be a lot of false positives if things like this become our criteria.
It seems to me that the key here isn’t that you’d block these people from flying necessarily but that you’d perhaps do an extra level of search that might have revealed what he was carrying with him. Still, I think there’s enough group-think on this issue that I thought DR’s take was worth airing.
