During all the brouhaha over the introduction of $$$, intrusive, dangerous full-body scanners and their attendant alternative obscene pat-downs, one remark on one of the cable news shows was ignored.
I don't remember who it was, but somebody noted that a suicide bomber did not need to get a bomb onto a plane to wreak utter havoc.
Now with this suicide attack at Moscow's main airport terminal building, we have gruesome evidence of the truth of that remark. I don't know if they have full body scanners at Moscow, but it would not have mattered if they had.
All a terrorist has to do is walk into the terminal building and seek out a crowded area--like a line of passengers waiting to go through the security check where they are all bunched up in snaking lines. He just gets in the middle and detonates, potentially killing as many people as he would have if he'd gotten onto a plane and certainly creating as much or more havoc.
The natural reaction (and I haven't heard that Russian aviation authorities have done this yet) would be to cancel all flights in the country while this is looked into. If terrorists were to coordinate several such attacks in different airports within a country or even in different countries, the economic and terror effects could be devastating.
In any event, it seems we may be looking at a new paradigm for terror attacks--one for which these expensive, boondoggle scanners are completely useless. Now what are they going to do? Put security checkpoints at the entrances to airport terminal buildings? A suicide bomber could just as easily get into one of those lines, wait until he was in the middle of the crowd and detonate as well. Would they then put checkpoints at the road entrances to airports and search all arriving traffic--buses, cars, taxis, shuttles, everything?
I just booked a flight to Germany for work this week and I am dreading the scene that may greet me at the airport. Who's going to want to fly under these conditions--especially now that you can't even select an aisle seat if you're flying economy?