analyses the effects, effectiveness, and sociology of modern security efforts. Starting with - strange as it may seem - an excursion into public conveniences, it then segues to subways, and the lion's share is spent on airports before an exploration of Hurricane Katrina.

This book says many of the things I've been trying to say for years, more thoughtfully, in more depth, with more nuance, and research rigor, and does it without parroting Bruce Schneider (although citing him liberally). Loud and clear is the message that the individual members of the public are the best security, and that official efforts have quite possibly never been effective, but are vastly costly in many dimensions. Tidbit: NY MTA subway operators are forbidden from touching members of the public under any circumstances. Fortunately some of them have ignored this and other rules in instances the author cites that saved lives.

I don't expect this considered treatise to gain any traction among the mouth-breathing Pavlov-trained Faux News watchers that make up a voting majority in the USA. More's the pity, but if that weren't the case we quite probably would never have responded in the ways that the author dissects to begin with.

Scott Bieser has a good answer. [url="http://www.scottbieser.com/images/sept11_c540jpg"]armed individuals[/url]

The URL didn't work for me. Could it have been ?

You're right; while I think the paranoid demographic does skew mainly right-wing, the current administration has done nothing to wind us down from DefCon 11. To my everlasting chagrin.