DescentBB

An interesting article on US Air Marshals. Do you think they can be effective with the current dress code?

I say let them go undercover. The goal is to protect, not look professional.

Whoa! I agree with Dedman! This has happened... what... once?

It reminds me of the joke of a solder in his camouflage uniform guarding the Golden Gate Bridge.

Be vewy vewy qwiet, wew hunting fow tewowists, heheheheheheheh!

Dedman wrote:I say let them go undercover. The goal is to protect, not look professional.

I don't know, goal should be to prevent & protect (in that order) -- IDing them will probably make any hijacker think twice if he goes for it. Mission accomplished for all I care, I'm not keen to end up in a fight betw. hijacker wannabes and incognito air marshalls at 10,000 feet..

Interesting. I'm not quite sure which side to "side with" on this one.

On the one hand, I agree that the current standard uniform essentially paints a big "kill-me-first" target on the Air Marshals who try to protect us; but on the other hand, they also need to make sure that their presence acts as a deterrent to any potential problem passengers (not just terrorists).

I'll have to think about this one some more... keep up the debate.

If terrorists can identify air marshals, catch them by surprise and kill them first, where is the deterrent? Worse, if they can identify the absence of air marshals, where is the deterrent on flights that don't have a marshal?

Only if the terrorists CANNOT identify air marshals can they serve an effective deterrent role, both when they are present and when they are not.


This is a no-brainer. Some people in the government need to set aside whatever nasty weeds they are smoking and clear their heads. Or else we should drag the stupid ones into a back closet somewhere and give them a good clubbing, then let them "take some sick days" to recover from that while the real business is being conducted. Then we can get to the solutions.


- Sirian

It does seem silly to have your marshalls so easily identfied. That would be fine if they were on every flight and located in a commanding position but if part of the deterent is that you don't know if there is a marshal on the flight or where he/she might be then any identifying characteristics are counter to the deterent effect.
I guess they are just to give a warm fuzzy feeling to the passengers that notice them. Shows that they are spending the tax dollars well.

haha this is quite profound when you think about it:

true anti-terrorism - the anti-fear of knowing that there are disguised people out there PROTECTING you, and you don't know who they are, they could be anyone.

it's a comfort you can't identify, to offset the threat you can't identify. brilliant.
it keeps the fear down on all accounts.

This administratin wants our fears up, at all times. It keeps them in power. That's not a conspiracy theory. It's an historically validated fact of war politics.

kufyit wrote:This administratin wants our fears up, at all times. It keeps them in power. That's not a conspiracy theory. It's an historically validated fact of war politics.

OMG, NO REALLY!?!? To tell you the truth Kuf, it seems you're a little bit more intimidated by the government and world events then most of us are The average person could really care less if you ask me.

The constitution keeps them in power, via having been duly elected. Bush got 2% more of the vote this time than he did in his first election, when he ran on tax cuts.

- Sirian

El-Al has had air marshals for donkeys years. They're either hippies with dodgy beards or the religious jews that don't pray half way through the flight. Dead easy to spot.

Flabby Chick wrote:El-Al has had air marshals for donkeys years. They're either hippies with dodgy beards or the religious jews that don't pray half way through the flight. Dead easy to spot.

Dodgy beard or prayers aside they must do something right, as terrorists seem to have a (life-saving) adversion to El-Al!

Sirian wrote:The constitution keeps them in power, via having been duly elected. Bush got 2% more of the vote this time than he did in his first election, when he ran on tax cuts.

- Sirian

Well, that seems to validate my point some.

kufyit wrote:

Sirian wrote:The constitution keeps them in power, via having been duly elected. Bush got 2% more of the vote this time than he did in his first election, when he ran on tax cuts.
- Sirian

Well, that seems to validate my point some.

How's that?

Saying that the "Constitution" keeps them in power isn't much more than a sarcastic remark intended to disrespect me. It hardly addresses the issue. Of course the Constitution keeps Presidents in power, it also designates appropriations procedures, protects our rights, declares life, liberty and property (original draft), and many many other things. Responding to an issue of political nuance by merely expanding to the entire system itself (voting; Constitution) is, especially coming from Sirian, simple mockery.

If you're really interested in American politics (which I can tell most of you aren't), then I can direct you to a number of sources that will explain my earlier statement.

You'll ask, I'm sure, just to see if I can produce. But then you'll forget, and keep going on reading your 5 inch blurbs and consuming your thirty second sound bites.

Sirian, I wonder if you have any idea of how uncontroversial and widely accepted my statement is? It's just simply a fact (or as close to fact as you get in a social science) of political strategy, traceable for millennia. Itâ??s not partisan. Itâ??s not conspiracy. Itâ??s not paranoia. Itâ??s not liberal wabble.

Itâ??s so common itâ??s boring.

This dress code thing is a crock. I flew from Sacramento to Fort Lauderdale and back a couple months ago and the few business dressed people I saw were on the legs between LA and Sac, probably because they were getting off the plane to go to a meeting. Give it a break. Business people don't fly dressed these days unless they have to.

Ok, so this Quinn dufus is former Secret Service. Nothing secret about it. Visibility is the key. You want your agents looking like a big, neon sign that says, "I am an agent and I will cap your a** if you try to pull any crap". But that's not going to work with Air Marshalls. I think Quinn has watched "Men in Black" too many times.

Solution. We place three Air Marshalls
standing in each passenger compartment in full combat gear, complete with grenades and a slung, locked and loaded, levelled M-60. Now doesn't that paint a pretty picture for American Freedom?

kufyit wrote:It’s so common it’s boring.

This president got less boost percentagewise than would be accounted for solely by the advantages of being an incumbent. Since fear isn't what elected him in the first place, and second time around he got about the same result as the first time plus a minor boost for being the incumbent, I find your assertion to be deserving of the reply that I gave it.

kufyit wrote:Sirian, I wonder if you have any idea of how uncontroversial and widely accepted my statement is?

You really ought to know better than to quote to me the number of people who you think believe in any given idea as an indication of that idea's validity.


Power in the USA is useless except for two things:

1) Getting something positive done.
2) Personal vanity.

While I'm sure all of our leaders have at least some of each of these, I cannot think of a single president who did not have way more of the first than he did of the second. Yet even those driven by vanity know that history will ultimately judge them based on the positive things they managed to oversee on their watch, so the second point ultimately only feeds the first anyway.


Men of good conscience disagree on what is best.

That is where you are falling down, Scott. You have begun to demonize the other side.

Are you going to pretend that the Democrats at their worst don't also pound on the fearmongering? Why just this week, the Democratic Party MAJORITY LEADER in the Senate is harping on the theme that "the President wants to destroy Social Security". Right. And I have a banana tree growing out of my @$$, and pigs have started to fly.

Democrats appeal to class warfare, trying to divide the electorate in their favor along economic lines. Democrats appeal to every minority special interest group that exists, aiming to divide the electorate along racial and ethnic lines. Democrats raise the specter of fear at every turn: fear about the economy, fear about entitlement programs, fear about education, fear about the environment, fear about the military, fear about civil liberties, fear about the approval of other nations, on and on and on the list goes, one long ugly resume of cynical complaints.

Lost somewhere in that littany of negativity is a set of positive ideals, of important values and priorities. I say lost because these days many Democrats are so shrill in their dissent, they have become swalloped up by their own fears, believing that the best political strategy is to demonize the opposition, rather than to trumpet what Democrats claim to stand for. These days, the only thing the Democrats seem to stand for is "anybody but Bush". Well, you can see where that strategy got them.


- Sirian

Brief response: I just said it WASN'T a partisan issue. It is true, Democrats, Repubicans, Communists, Socialists, Facists, rebel leaders and ANYONE else involved in political power struggles will use fear to boost their political longevity. Everyone will do it, Sir. That's what I said, at least I believe I sufficently insinuated it in my previous post. I dont hate Republicans, or any other party for that matter. As I have said on this board before, I am independent. My gripes with the Bush Administration are not partisan. They are very specific; they stem from the Bush Doctrine and, more generally, neoconservatism.

I do believe that YOU are the culprit in the party drudge this time around my man.

kufyit wrote:I do believe that YOU are the culprit in the party drudge this time around my man.

oh nose! you disagreed with Sirian. prepare to be talked down to as if you had a low IQ.

kufyit wrote:Brief response: I just said it WASN'T a partisan issue.

If it quacks, it's a duck.

Proof of nonsense at work: "political strategy, traceable for millennia."

Fearmongering keeps despots in power. Divide and conquer. American executives are subject to the election process. See my argument with Birds about Hermann Goering's Nuremburg pronouncement.


The notion of applying principles used by kings and tyrants for millenia to what our elected officials are all about is insulting on the face of it.

We already had the "there is no terrorist threat" conversation in this forum. It's only fearmongering when the fear is unjustified. President Roosevelt said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Then he changed his mind nine years later, when the Japanese killed 2400 at Pearl Harbor. Apparently, we should have feared them a little more and feared our fear a little less. But, that one I won't lay on FDR, since I have the benefit of hindsight. You, too, have the benefit of hindsight. Take advantage of the opportunity.


- Sirian

Ferno wrote:you disagreed with Sirian. prepare to be talked down to as if you had a low IQ.

I see that calling you out on one bit of hypocrisy has turned you into a sniper who will take a cheap shot at every opportunity. :: It's your loss.


- Sirian