Reply #16: Given the population who's been carrying out acts of terror on airplanes [View All]

[Bucky]

Why in the hell don't they have someone at the airport who can read Arabic? That sounds like really shitty security to me. Imagine there really were terrorists carrying on activities at JFK. How could security people at these airports deal with a handwritten note they discovered? That would be one hell of a piece of evidence to be unable to read at a pretty critical spot.

Of course one possible (and moderately more encouraging) possibility is that they do have someone who can read Arabic around, but quickly realized that they were bumping heads with an intelligent but unthreatening guy who happens to know his rights. After realizing that, they were just out to show him who's the boss and force him to blindly bend to their authority--security was not an issue, just authority--so there's no reason to bother their on-site Arabic translator.

That's one possiblity. The other is that they really don't have anyone who understands Arabic on the security detail for an airport that's got to be on al-Qaeda's short list of most desireable targets. While we're decrying the corroding of our basic rights to not be accosted by police without good cause, let's not forget that the other tragedy here is another example of how incompetantly underprepared we are for security in this country.