Originally Posted by balderdash111

I have to agree with sob here. Stompy, you are being a little too dismissive.

A few thoughts:

it should be obvious to all that such a laser could be located anywhere within the pilots' visual range from the cockpit. If he can see you, then you can hit his eyes with a laser. Of course, the farther away you are, the harder it will be to aim, so your best shot is going to be on approach.

I voted for Kerry, so please don't accuse me of being an apologist, but I think all this crap about alarmist terror warnings is hypocritical. YOu can question the timing (and I do), but you can't question the release of the information. Put yourself in the administration's position, if you will. You capture an al Qaeda operative or uncover some al Qaeda documents and find out they have been studying a particular attack. What would you do? If you don't release it as a warning to police, etc., and the attack is used, do you think people will say "well, it's ok that they knew this was possible and didn't tell anyone, b/c they knew not to freak everyone out with every possible type of attack"

In fact, knowing that they have no choice but to release the information, if I were a terrorist I would keep documents suggesting I'd studied every kind of attack under the sun just so as to keep people afraid. Keeping people afraid is exactly my goal, and all the better if I can make the administration do my work for me.

finally, this is 20/02 hindsight, of course, but it is now clear that such an attack is entirely plausible, so clearly you were wrong in saying it was highly improbable, etc. Next time, feel free to say you think something improbable, but acknowledge that you could be mistaken.