Debra Burlingame informs us that Attorney-General Eric Holder has declined to renew Special Administrative Measures (enhanced security restraints) on al-Qaeda Shoe Bomber Richard Reid. The man who tried to mass-murder over 200 people flying over the Atlantic in December 2001 will be transferred from a SuperMax facility to a less secure prison. Reid has claimed in a lawsuit that being confined in a SuperMax violated his First Amendment free speech & religious rights.
Reid declared: "I am at war with America." Apparently, Team Obama will give him more opportunities to continue his war. Since Reid's 2001 arrest we all have been doffing our shoes every time we fly. Now, consider these 2006 global air travel statistics:
Today, the global airline industry consists of over 2000 airlines operating more than 23,000 aircraft, providing service to over 3700 airports. In 2006, the world’s airlines flew almost 28 million scheduled flight departures and carried over 2 billion passengers. The growth of world air travel has averaged approximately 5% per year over the past 30 years, with substantial yearly variations due both to changing economic conditions and differences in economic growth in different regions of the world. Historically, the annual growth in air travel has been about twice the annual growth in GDP. Even with relatively conservative expectations of economic growth over the next 10-15 years, a continued 4-5% annual growth in global air travel will lead to a doubling of total air travel during this period.
In the US airline industry, approximately 100 certificated passenger airlines operate over 11 million flight departures per year, and carry over one-third of the world’s total air traffic – US airlines enplaned 745 million passengers in 2006. US airlines reported over $160 billion in total revenues, with approximately 545,000 employees and over 8,000 aircraft operating 31,000 flights per day. The economic impacts of the airline industry range from its direct effects on airline employment, company profitability and net worth to the less direct but very important effects on the aircraft manufacturing industry, airports, and tourism industries, not to mention the economic impact on virtually every other industry that the ability to travel by air generates. Commercial aviation contributes 8 percent of the US Gross Domestic Product, according to recent estimates.
Let's do the math, using 2006 as a proxy for 2002-2009 figures, given that air travel has steadily increased at 5 percent annually for 30 years, and 2006 is in the mid-point of our time period, thus averaging out the lower figures for 2002-2005 & the higher numbers for 20087-2009. For 7 years, 8 months since December 2001 the world's passengers have shucked their shoes every time they fly commercial. At 2B passengers annually, that is over 15 BILLION times to date that we have gone through the shoe routine, simply because this one monster turd tried to use a shoe bomb to blow up a single plane.
And now this ghastly turd wants us--is SUING us--to give him more lenient treatment. And Team Obama is going to accommodate his request. Think about this the next time you fly.
Bottom Line. Once again our enemy--in this case, a jihadist would-be mass murderer--has successfully used our legal system as a weapon of war against us. It seems we will not learn how expensive this folly can prove, until if & when (pray it will not happen) a WMD strike decimates an American city, or an EMP strike cripples the entire country. It would be cheaper to learn the "lawfare" lesson now.
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