Time for Passengers to Profile and Act

Time for Passengers to Profile and Act

Americans now know that one Islamic terrorist sitting at a strategic point in an airplane can use a PETN (Pentaerythritol) explosive to take down an airplane. Richard Reid’s failure in 2001 and Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab’s failure on Christmas Day does not minimize the threat. Detonating one small, hard-to-detect, latex-based container could kill hundreds and send our already struggling economy into a tailspin.

In both cases, we can be thankful for incompetent bombers, faulty explosives and the heroic action of the crew and passengers. But if the explosives had worked, those...