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| Friday, August 11, 2006 |
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Plane speaking 
| | A friend who lives there added this by email: |
| | "Well shit," was reportedly the first comment from the cockpit of the Delta airliner. |
| | "Don't worry, we'll send someone out with a chain," was the reply from the control tower, "soon as we can get the truck started." |
| | After only 45 minutes of searching for a set of jumper cables to get the regional airport's tow truck started, a ground crew of six were able to attach a "logging chain" to the wheel strut of the aircraft. The ground crew then began attempting to pull the aircraft and all its passengers out of the muddy rut. |
| | Witnesses said that while there were at least six ground crew involved in the rescue attempt, however, five of the crew seemed to stand back and watch while one member attached the chain, surveyed the situation from various angles and then drove the tow vehicle. |
| | The Delta jetliner was finally extracted from the mire after two hours of intense effort to enthusiastic cheers and applause from the ground crew and crowd of spectators which had gathered at the scene. |
| | I have no idea if that's true (I might find out more from my correspondent in Jackson), but I like it better. [Later...] He says he was "embellishing" for fun, but that he likes his version better too. |
Doing the math
| | The strategy of terrorism is to use isolated acts of violence to instill fear and confusion into the population at large. A small number of people can incapacitate a society by leveraging our inability to understand risk. |
| | London's police deputy commissioner Paul Stevenson said that the plot was "intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale." No, it is imaginable: between three and ten flights out of thousands would have resulted in the terrible loss of human life. |
| | Bush today said this country is safer today than it was prior to 9/11. Personally, I don't think he knows. Whether we like it or not, terrorist attacks on Americans are now part of the global reality. They will continue to happen. Many places around the globe have had to deal with a similar reality for years. India, Ireland, England, Spain, Russia, to name a few. In many cases, these societies have pulled together and not allowed isolated acts of violence to tear at their fiber. Like disease and the forces of nature, it's a risk that we have to rationally come to terms with. The government's responsibility is to make sure that fear and terror are not disproportionate to the reality of the situation. |
| | Today the President said, "This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom to hurt our nation." Generalized statements like this which instill nebulous fear without specific information are exactly in line with the goals of terrorism. |
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