We should have been sipping insulin months ago.

Earlier we compared an afternoon of imagined violence/sex to five days of actual pizza. Today we tackle imagined versus actual security.

Setting aside for the moment the possibility that forced ingestion of carry-on liquids won't work, another major issue remains. Why is the liquid policy being instituted only now?

We've known about these particular fuckers for months, and planes have been blown up before. As a previous character might say, as an American in 2001 yourself, you've seen what happens when we underestimate the enemy.

That we are forcing passengers to drink their liquids means we (think we) might catch someone trying to make a plane go boom. So:

(1) why didn't we start this on, say, September 12, 2001?
(2) if that's asking too much (which it's not), why didn't we start as soon as we were onto these dudes?

Perhaps we were worried we'd give away that we were onto them, but then again the whole premise of any search is that some of the bad guys might escape our vigilant tracking. (Anyway that objection makes question (1) burn more brightly.)
Maybe another terror cell also had the bright idea to blow up a plane with some liquids. Wouldn't they deserve to be caught too?

How simple things once were