France threatened by Islamists

100% agree. i just wanted to say that we have to take the war as a possible reason and we have to think of the possibility that it was this organisation and that it was only because of the war. but there are many people here who say it would have happened regardless (which is also possible), and we shouldn't take this for sure. there are so many signs as well that this is really connected to the war.

bollocks. unless you're firing water out of those guns it will definately pierce the plane.

and, as mreto pointed out, you find me a trained gun user for every section of every plane.....

Given the precautions we have now, there would be a delay between the time the passengers realized there was a hijacking going on, and the time the hijackers reached the pilots. And the pilots could be armed too (many were up until the 60s, with no ill effects).

Let me put forth a scenario for you to consider. Its not uncommon for there to be hundreds (200-400, I believe) of people on a plane. The terrorists would only number about 5-6. Now imagine that there are 50 armed (and law-abiding citizens) on board, as well as the armed pilots. Worst case scenario, the terrorists (who you say would be similarly armed) manage to kill, say, a dozen of their fellow passengers before being downed by the law abiding armed citizens. Wouldn't this be preferable to to the hijackers knifing the pilots and running the plane into a skyscraper loaded with innocent people? And that's the worst case scenario. What's more likely is that the half-dozen terrorists would find themselves surrounded and outgunned by 50 of their fellow passengers, and either make some sort of half-baked escape attempt or give up.

I'm sorry, but your statistics are misleading, more than likely intentionally. Lets look at concealed carry statistics. 46 (or 47) states have laws allowing concealed carry. Its not unreasonable to assume there are 5000 people per state carrying concealed weapons (it probably averages out to more). In the history of the concealed carry laws, there have been under a dozen homicides by CCW license holders. Out of probably 230,000. Police mistakenly kill more innocent bystanders per year than people carrying concealed weapons have EVER killed. Ok, now lets look at the statement about more people being killed with guns than were killed on 9/11. In order to get our gun death statistics, we add up all the suicides, accidents, self-defense shootings (by law-abiding Americans), and all the justified shootings of criminals by police. But when you state "more people were killed with guns than were killed on 9/11" it sounds like gangbangers are cutting down our Sunday school classes with automatic weapons. And how many stories of kids getting shot have you really heard of? If I'm not mistaken, the accidental death rate of children under the age of 10 is under 50 per year for the entire country. Tragic, rare accidents yes. An epidemic, no.

Definitely! While stopping our support of Israel would alienate that country, we don't really need Israel for much of anything (its true - we don't import much from them, and we give them billions of dollars), and it would be a good start towards regaining our standing in the world. Many, many countries consider Israel to be a threat to world peace, as well as a terrorist country, and we'd probably get more people behind us than we'd lose, at least we'd get many people to stop hating us.

Adrian

United States are being controlled by the jewish lobby, so that will never happen.

And I pointed out numerous times that if Blair took us to war he'd make us a target. "Not in our name". I really don't think there's much chance of them checking there's no anti-war supporters in the area before they attack.

A huge majority of the terrorist attacks r being carried out in the East.... I find this dismissing them as simply against the West a little strange. I say them, but there r loads of different types of terrorists with different objectives. And as yet, we haven't even tried to find out why - just resigned ourselves to actions that seem to incite more.

The ex-Spain prime ministers hard line on terrorists certainly didn't work.

Mike we were a target long before we went to Iraq.

Whether it's somethign we've done in the past thats caused it or not, the point is we're going to get hit.

Yes, we became a target as soon as we starting interfering with the Middle East, taking their resources & putting Israel in power....

Iraq has continued to keep us in the firing line. Not only that, it has become a breeding ground for terrorists, thus increasing the threat.

Our interference in the middle east from day one has made us a target. We set up Israel in a land that didn't belong to them, and the Arabs have hated us for it since. We continue to support Israel, we park our troops on Arab holy land, we gouge them for oil every chance we get (its only our continued military presense in the middle east that keeps oil from going up to what should be its natural price), we play Stratego with their sovereign nations, and then we have the audacity to wonder why they hate us so much. We should cut Israel loose, pull our military out of all the places it shouldn't be, and the concentrate on dealing with the threats that attack us at home. And when/if we are attacked at home for no reason at all, then we should respond with all possible force, and in all possible (legal) ways. No more high-tech drive-bys that do nothing more than blow up a few tents and kill innocent people. I'm thinking bounties in the billions, since we'll have saved so much money by not over-extending ourselves. That's the way to solve our problems.

Adrian

I heard on the news here today that Poland says they will keep their troops in Iraq as long as they are needed.

Oh, and anyone actually believing that a terrorist would say that they will leave Spain alone is really gullible. It's a hoax, people.