Flying Blind.(ISSUES & INSIGHTS)(EDITORIALS)(Editorial)

Security: The recent downing of two Russian jets is a clear warning that terrorists might like a replay of 9-11 in the U.S. Sadly, political correctness may help them.

For all the recommendations of a 9-11 commission formed to answer the question, "How was it that 19 young Middle Eastern males were able to hijack four airliners and use them to kill 3,000 innocents in an hour?" it seems we've learned nothing.

Recent reports from flight crews, sky marshals and passengers such as Annie Jacobsen, a writer for the online magazine Women's Wall Street, show that young Middle Eastern men are again staking out airports, probing security measures and conducting drills aboard commercial aircraft in preparation for a terrorist attack.

Worse yet, it is official U.S. policy to do nothing about it, as evidenced by the Transportation Department's continued failure to endorse racial profiling in airport security checks.

In Jacobsen's account, confirmed by the Federal Air Marshal Service, 14 young Syrian males were aboard Northwestern Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles June 29 pretending to be strangers.

Once the plane was airborne, they stood and gathered in groups of two and three, filing in and out of the lavatories, with one taking a bag from a fast food chain in with him and passing it to the next upon exiting. When the pilot announced the plane was preparing to land, seven jumped up and went to different lavatories.

A January FBI memo says suicide terrorists are planning to ...