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iPod Listeners to Be Profiled?

As noted below, the first plot to blow up airliners with liquid explosives was foiled in 1994. That particular scheme used a cheap Casio watch as a timer, a detail that might have remained a footnote if not for the, um, thoroughness of American counterterror officials. Fast forward 10 years, and now more than a dozen Guantanamo detainees have been held in part because they were caught wearing what the government has called "the infamous Casio watch." We recently printed some excerpts from their military tribunal hearings, in which the incredulous detainees tried to understand the logic of wristwatch profiling:

Detainee 651, Usama Hassan Ahmend Abu Babir: I have a Casio watch due to the fact that they are inexpensive and they last a long time. I like my watch because it is durable. It had a calculator and was waterproof, and before prayers we have to wash up all the way to my elbows.

Detainee 298, Salih Uyar: If it is a crime to carry this watch, your own military personnel also carry this watch. Does this mean they’re just terrorists as well?

Detainee 228, Abdullah Kamel Abudallah Kamel: When they told me that Casios were used by Al Qaeda and the watch was for explosives, I was shocked…. If I had known that, I would have thrown it away. I’m not stupid. We have four chaplains [at Guantanamo]; all of them wear this watch.

Detainee 154, Mazin Salih Musaid al Awfi: Millions and millions of people have these types of Casio watches. If that is a crime, why doesn’t the United States arrest and sentence all the shops and people who own them? This is not a logical or reasonable piece of evidence.

Today's plot reportedly involved MP3 players as timers. Air passengers in Britain have already been told not to bring their iPods on board. Earbud wearers, you've been warned.

Comments

>> Earbud wearers, you've been warned

And you liberals doubted that anything good would come of the war against the evil-doers. All the earbud people will now be sent to Guantanamo, FINALLY!

Posted by: John on 08/10/06 at 4:18 PM

Yes, indeed, and what will it be next that American citizens
will find banned at airports?

I have said all along that to treat Americans as terrorists at our airports is not going to make us safer, not to even mention the satisfaction the actual terrorists have to be deriving from the hysteria as the media's shrill reports go on and on and on?

The moment we started letting this happen America lost it to the terrorists. What kind of freedom do we have now? I am disgusted by fear mongers in top positions of federal government manipulating the people of America when that should never be possible -- Americans should be made of far stronger stuff than we have apparently devolved into when the Bush regime seized power and pulled off 9/11 in order to do what they have been able to do because of it.

And to be quite honest about it, I don't believe a word of the story that led to citizens
of the United States being subjected to throwing away perfume, deoderant, water, lip
gloss, etc. at airports. It's stupid enough to have to take off one's shoes just to prove that we are not wild-eyed middle easterners on suicide missions wanting to blow up airplanes.

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