Due to FAA and military incompetance...

Minneapolis or St. Paul could have been targets for a terrorist-controlled jetliner. I'm posting this not to sound like Fox News, but to highlight the fact that the FAA, NORAD, the military, et al are acting the same way they were prior to the September 11th attacks.

Despite all of the billions soaked into the war on terror, despite all the debate over the loss of civil rights and the right of government to acquire intelligence by whatever means, despite all of the new bureaucracy, we still have a significant problem with the incompetence of key links in the chain.

What the FAA's action tells us is that the only security profile of terrorists we have is whatever profile they used before.

Babbit defended his people by noting the transponders weren't turned off and the plane didn't send out an emergency signal (the ones on 9/11 didn't either, by the way). Others have pointed out it didn't change course or altitude.

That profile has been used only once before and prior to that, it wasn't used at all and the fact we didn't have that profile is one of the reasons the FAA was slow to react on 9/11.

So what do terrorists learn from this? Keep your transponders on and hijack a jet that's already heading to your target, and the U.S. government won't bother you.

There was a lot of incompetence going on in the cockpit of Flight 188, but the incompetence that is far more serious in the big picture is that exhibited by the command and control structure of the agencies in charge of the one area where people think the next attack will come from -- the sky.