Jim - the FAA may have been all over them, but the big question is did they complete those inspections yet? And even if they did, you still have to ask what else has not been found (problems overall, not just metal.) Again, look at the unauthorized parts that were used. Look at the hole that ripped open.
There's one other thing that makes me wonder. A few months ago the had a plane make an emergency landing in Tampa. It was flying Orlando to Denver and turned around, reporting smoke from a lavatory. They evacuated the aircraft (using the slides). Now, here's where things get hazy. The airport fire department confirmed smoke in the cabin, but no fire. Southwest corporate stated in it's news releases (several times) that there was NO smoke in the cabin.
I got a little insider word on this one that some of the passengers said their eyes were burning. This tells me it's not smoke, but vaporized hydraulic fluid. Probably from the APU (auxiliary power unit - gives electric, air conditioning, and compressed air to stat the engines). It would have been shut down at that point, but still parts would be hot as hell. And it sits behind the lavatories on a 737. Hmmm. Here's a further Hmmm - an emergency landing that requires a fire department response, and en evacuation of passengers, and it never gets reported to the NTSB. Any incident like this is reportable, and can be seen here:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/query.asp
Your numbers are also very flawed. Wherever you got that figure from for the number of flights in the last 25 years, why don't you look up the number of flights for Untied, Delta and American. Also you can scratch 2 each for American and Untied as those were terrorist acts on 9/11, so not exactly due to some wrong doing on the part of the airlines. I know that there were lawsuits and such, however they were following all of the security procedures set forth by the government at the time.