Shoe Money Tonight

I told myself earlier today not to post again until my compradres get off their lazy tuchuses, but I just read something that bothers me about this Los Angeles terror plot that the U.S. prevented in 2002. Maybe I'm thinking too hard, but I find it odd that the terrorists apparently used shoe bombs in their attempt to hijack the plane into the Library Tower. Bear with me here: If you wanted to commandeer an airplane and direct it into a tower, wouldn't shoe bombs just blow up the cockpit? And if you try to commandeer the plane yourself, you're going to have to drop the shoe bomb or the ignition device, thus losing the threat. So they must have had guns or something else to try to convince the pilots to steer the plane into civilians. But according to all the news reports, they only had these shoe bombs. Also, Bush said al-Qaeda intended to blast open the cockpit door. Wouldn't that cause some type of damage to the plane (uh, like a gigantic hole) that would cause the cabin to lose air pressure, causing the plane to lose control and crash into the ground instead of the intended target? So how many points do we really give the administration for snuffing out what seems to be a rather poorly planned hijacking? (Notice how I didn't mention the timing of this announcement -- in the heat of the bad press from the federal wiretapping. Too bad; to me, the news has this air of a desperate sales pitch.)