Posted on 04/08/2010 12:31:54 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Yeah, you’re right. It’s a pipe dream. I keep holding on to the notion that there are decent people in the world. The population of good is slowly dwindling.
Great!
Well, we are in bed with barbarians. Can you imagine a British or Australian or Canadian diplomat acting like this? How about a Japanese or a German? Joking about setting his shoes on fire?
That kinda makes sense.
Hmmmmmmmmmm ???
Someone better check the White House visitor logs for his name..
LSMFT.
Diplomatic Immunity- a weapon to be used against us
“IMHO, There’s something more to this...we’re just not being told...”
So do I. One passenger gave an interview shortly after the “incident” and reported that Al-Madadi was going back and forth to the bathroom “multiple times.” A flight attendant spoke to him, but he did not stop his visits to the bathroom. It was then that the flight attendant notified the air marshal, who then confronted Al-Madadi.
To my knowledge this passenger (Steve Cantrill) was only interviewed by one reporter. I have not seen his account printed anywhere else.
I posted several excerpts from this article shortly after the story hit the press last night, but the post was pulled due to copyright restrictions. I saved the article, but the link now displays an entirely different updated article on Al-Madadi and the subsequent actions taken by officials.
So...there does appear to be more to the story...but what?
And what did he use to light the cigarette? I thought that matces and lighters were forbidden on flights. Maybe is was not subject to a full security check..due to diplomatic status.
Good questions. One reader at the website had a suggestion:
For all of you kids working on a Science Fair project... invent a smoke alarm system for airplane bathrooms that will unlock the bathroom door and fling it open if someone tries to smoke in the bathroom.
I agree, there is more to the story.
They used to be. Now you can take a lighter, but not matches. I traveled to Denver last week with a couple from Argentina. They were able to take their cigarette lighters through security, but their matches were confiscated. I’m flying through Denver again on Saturday. Think I’ll test it just for my own curiosity.
Makes no sense to me.
Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco?
:-)
Yes, several things combine to suggest that this is not a simple story of sneaking a furtive smoke in the lav. In fact, it strikes me as just the opposite.
First we have two—count em, two—air marshals aboard the flight. The passenger is a Qatari diplomat on his way to visited a jailed al-qaeda terrorist. Multiple trips back and forth to the bathroom. F-16’s are scrambled. Then there’s the whole smoking thing which, frankly, doesn’t ring true.
We don’t even know for a fact that he was actually smoking. No reports of the smoke alarm going off in the tiny enclosure. He’d been back and forth multiple times. If he had been smoking, smoke would have poured from the lav when he opened the door. If he hadn’t been smoking each of those times, what was he doing? And where were the hordes of smoke-sensitives clutching their throats and demanding recompense from the airline for being trapped in that flying coffin with that deadly, poisoned air?
I’m calling BS. I don’t think he was smoking at all. So why does he want us to think he was?
When confronted outside the lav by the air marshal, he tamped a pipe against his shoe and made the incendiary wisecrack. This makes no sense whatsoever. You throw yourself on their mercy, you don’t compound the federal offense of smoking on a plane with an even worse federal offense of making threats. Unless being an a-ho was designed to reinforce the “arrogant smoker” image to help hide an even more egregious offense.
Did the marshal find several tobacco pouches? If he was, indeed, the rare pipe smoker unable to go the length of the flight without a smoke, the air marshal should have found several pouches of tobacco on him. Someone that addicted that they have to sneak multiple times into the lav wouldn’t have just one. Did interrogators on the ground quiz him about his brand and style of pipe? Did they ask him to demonstrate the act of filling a pipe and lighting it and smoking it? It’s a practiced skill and those who are new at it are pretty obvious.
Back in Washington, there should be plenty of easily verifiable eye-witnesses to his long-standing, heavy smoking habit if it exists. If we have any journalists with instincts for a story left in this country, let’s hope they’re right now tromping about Al-Madadi’s haunts, gathering statements.
I have no idea what this diplomat’s game was. But I doubt it was about sneaking a smoke.
Bump.
Ping.
“If we have any journalists with instincts for a story left in this country...”
that’s the operative phrase. I think the story is dead. And they are shipping him out of the country to make sure it stays dead.
9news.com is where I saw the original story. I have not seen the passenger I mentioned interviewed anywhere else, and as far as I know, he is the only passenger reporting these observations.
If I see anything else about it, I’ll ping you.
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