Larry K --

My point is simple: prior to the attacks of September 11, you didn't have to remove your shoes, your bags weren't wiped down (and golf clubs didn't trigger alarms because of the fertilizer used on the fairways), and there were REASONABLE precautions taken. Since then there has been a great shift in the attitude of the traveling public, one that is (I think) healthy: they will not be cowed by a thug with a weapon.

They realize that there are risks, and not only are they willing to take those risks, they are willing to reduce or eliminate those they can have some control over.

This is something that all of the air marshals, all of the current security measures, could never achieve.

I do not object at all to REASONABLE precautions. I do not want a .357 in the cabin with me unless it's in the holster of a police officer. (I don't mind if it's locked, unloaded, in the checked baggage.) I do object -- strongly! -- to waiting in line for half and hour at Seatac because there weren't enough security personnel on duty. (And don't tell me that TSA can't control staffing; I modify it all the time to meet demand and they certainly have -- or should have -- access to the numbers of people flying at any particular time of the day.) I object to the announced plans of the Bush administration to cut back the number of Air Marshals just before raising the "alert level," since it seems to show that they want it both ways.

I've flown through Heathrow, Gatwick, CDG, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin and Shannon -- Shannon since the events of September 11, the others during "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. I felt safe. Under the current situation in the US, I feel oppressed by the official paranoia.

The examples, the teachers, were in place in European airports for years. The measures were as effective as such measures can be. Yet the US didn't learn from them.

No, I would not yell if such attacks as those of 2001 were repeated since I don't think that they will be. The purposes of those attacks were achieved, and while I expect further terrorist attacks I think that they'll be by other means. Terrorists, stupid though they are, won't repeat their methods because we are now awake to those that were used and not only officaldom, but the traveling public, won't permit such tactics. Future attacks will be by completely different means, and no, I won't even mention those I can think of.

Drop back to the pre-September 2001 security procedures at airports.