"Rosspilot" wrote in message
...
My response to the writer and editors of the Globe:

**************************************
Enough is enough! Your hysteria regarding the "threat to security" of
General
Aviation is a shameful and irresponsible attack on innocent, hard-working,
tax-paying productive American citizens who earn their livelihood by
flying
these aircraft.

We are among the most law-abiding and careful citizens you will find, as
our
lives (and our passenger's lives) depend wholly on what we do.

Your story is an insult to us. There has never been a single incident of
terrorism using small planes--and using all the creative power I can
muster, I
could not envision a scenario where my little 4 place- single engine
Cessna
could do any serious damage to anything.

Your "stadium scenario" is nonsense . . . it is far more likely that any
of the
millions of panel trucks, rental trucks, or other vehicles can be used for
attacks.

A single motorcycle rider with a backpack full of a nerve agent of other
poison
can ride through Times Square and do a lot more damage. Even a single
subway
rider with a backpack full of viral agent could infect thousands and
thousands
of people. Why aren't you writing stories about UNCHECKED backpacks and
motorcycles?

It's time to stop "piling on" aviators . . . we have been scapegoated long
enough for the attack on the WTC.

Your heartless scare-tactics are simply to inflame and create more
irrational
fear, and to sell more papers.

Shame on you!


Lee Ross
www.Rosspilot.com
New York

On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 10:07:05 -0700, "gatt"
wrote in
::

Hey, Ross; as a former magazine editor, I applaud your article. Succinct,
to the point, and scorching. Very well done! Now, let's see if they have
the courage to print it.

-c


When Ross wrote:

"Your heartless scare-tactics are simply to inflame and create
more irrational fear, and to sell more papers."

It struck a resonate chord in my thinking about this issue.

Unfortunately, Ross's response to the Boston Globe contains more heat
than light. It appears to attribute the "information" provided by The
Center for Strategic and International Studies employees to the author
of Globe article. Ross goes on to proclaim the law abiding
responsibleness of airmen, but that wasn't questioned in the article
and seems irrelevant; for it would be amoral criminal terrorists
perpetrating terrorist acts not regular law abiding airmen. And while
Ross confesses to being unable to imagine a scenario for the use of
light aircraft in a terrorist plot, that says more about his feeble
creative powers than it does about the unsuitability of such aircraft
for terrorist purposes.

So while I don't like the sensational spin applied by Karen Schaler to
The Center for Strategic and International Studies' information, I am
happy to be informed that such a study is under way. If I were to
take the author of the Globe article to task, I would emphasize the
lack of naming the specific organizations that funded the "research."

I have a feeling. that that information would be enlightening, and
perhaps provide a valid basis for discrediting the conclusions reached
by The Center for Strategic and International Studies.