Tag: airports

Hrm. Maybe those white elephant Polish airports ARE for eventual military use.

I don’t know how snarky Glenn Reynolds was being about this report…

The European Union has given Poland more than 100 million euros ($125 million) to build at least three “ghost” airports in places where there are not enough passengers to keep them in business.

The result is gleaming new airport terminals which, even at the peak of the holiday season, echo to the sound of empty concourses and spend millions trying to attract airlines.

…when he suggested that they’d make good impromptu airstrips in case of a military invasion by the Soviets.  Err, sorry: ‘Russians.’  Old Cold Warrior reflex.  Anyway, and not to be all Cold War spy-nostalgic or anything, but if you look at a map to see where the airports (Reuters reports them as being  Lodz, Rzeszow and Lublin) that were renovated are: Continue reading Hrm. Maybe those white elephant Polish airports ARE for eventual military use.

If at first you don’t succeed…

(Via Instapundit) There’s a lot of meat in this post about How The System Worked, but what struck/disquieted me was this almost-casual observation:

Al Qaeda seems to have a lot of respect for US border security screening.  That’s why it is trying to commit terrorist attacks on US soil without actually entering the US.  Since border measures were strengthened after 9/11, al Qaeda has tried three separate plots using the same basic technique — get on a transatlantic flight and blow it up before it lands and before the terrorists are put through our border screening process.  Every plot has failed.  But if this doesn’t remind you of the successive World Trade Center attacks, you’re not paying attention.  They’ve got a schtick, and they’re going to keep using it until it works.

You ever hear what the IRA once told the British? “We only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky all the time.” That’s how terrorists think: stop them nineteen times and they’ll keep coming back for a twentieth bite at the apple.  That doesn’t mean that they can’t be deterred or suppressed; but you can’t do either by waiting for them to commit a crime and then arrest them all.  You do either by finding them and killing everybody who doesn’t surrender, and by detaining the ones who do so that you can interrogate them and get more intelligence about their compatriots still remaining alive and at liberty.

We don’t let cops do that in this country.  We don’t want cops to be able to do that in this country.  Given the way that the Left has indirectly encouraged this country’s growing acceptance of torture, one wonders why they seem so determined to also encourage the American people to think that it’s necessary to let cops be able to do that.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.