Guards armed with rifles stood at the security checkpoints in several airports. The governors of California and Massachusetts said they were sending the National Guard to bolster security at major airports, and New York's governor was considering doing the same.
The new ban on all liquids and gels from carry-on luggage left people with little choice but to throw away juice boxes, bags full of makeup, perfume and bottles of liquor and wine. Baby formula and medicines were exempt but had to be inspected.
Why don't they just ask everyone to drink from their liquid bottles? Isn't that a ure way to see if there's explosives in them? As to exempting baby formula and medicine, that sounds dangerous. Why not pour some in the baby's mouth? If the parent balks, call them out for a special search, but keep the line moving.
As to the lines:
At Newark Airport in New Jersey, the security checkpoint line for Terminal B, home to most international flights, stretched the entire length of the terminal - roughly six football fields - and was barely moving.
A thumbs-up to Manchester, NH:
Some passengers gave banned items away. Airport officials in Manchester, N.H., officials offered padded envelops and paid the postage to mail items home.
More on the threat from the Guardian:
As international disruption began to cause delays at US airports, Mr Chertoff and Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, became the first officials to publicly suggest al-Qaida might have been involved. Speaking to reporters in Washington DC, Mr Chertoff repeatedly cited the British legal system as a reason for withholding details, but he did call the disrupted plans "suggestive of an al-Qaida plot". Mr Mueller also said the scheme "had the earmarks of an al-Qaida plot."
As to the 21 persons arrested in Britain:
While the British home secretary, John Reid, declined to give any details of the identities of the 21 people arrested in overnight raids in the UK, the first clues began to emerge in the US. The terrorism expert Peter Bergen told CNN he understood the detainees to be Britons of Pakistani descent.
President Bush will make a public statement later today.
