Our president has brought himself a series of major problems.
His failures to secure our air travel, sending out that moron to tell us "the system worked..." and now all this talk about about new, intrusive (and no doubt, incredibly expensive) and in the case of the Crotchbomber, utterly useless airport scanners.
This is a CLASSIC bait and switch. It's the very definition of attempting to confuse the American population that they're REALLY doing something THIS time... and even though it's going to cost us MORE billions, they overlook that fact that had these scanners been in place.... had the Crotchbomber actually BEEN scanned with one of these...
.... it wouldn't have made any difference. It wouldn't have worked, anyway.
It hasn't been so long that I've forgotten one critical, post 9/11 fact: The hijackers did nothing before the attack started that was illegal in the sense that they carried illegal or otherwise prohibited items on board those aircraft.
Government under Bush felt that a huge response to the matter was necessary, however, so they embarked on a massive, incredibly wasteful program to increase federal employment (and federal unions) by an additional 70,000 or so federal employees.
The items they brought on board the aircraft were not prohibited at the time. They didn't "slip through" security. No one looked the other way.
The fact is that they were successful in large part because no one anticipated that 20 guys could hijack 4 aircraft and fly them into targets which would have resulted in the deaths of the hijackers as well as the passengers.
A fanatic willing to die in the name of their cause to complete their crime is the most dangerous of all. While not completely unknown in our society, we had relegated them to a Waco-like status, where adherents were nut jobs, incapable of the planning and coordination the 9/11 attacks actually required.
They were mostly successful because we were mostly unprepared. And no amount of federalizing 70,000 people would have made any damned difference even if that had been done BEFORE the hijacking.
But the White House (Bush) needed to do SOMETHING to keep the people from focusing on the systemic failure of our security system that allowed this to happen. So, this massive and ongoing waste of money was whipped up with democrat approval (obviously) and the GOP was too timid to point out what a waste it was, and how it wouldn't have made any difference in the outcome, anyway.
We made all these changes. And, we changed policies to keep the items used in the hijackings off our aircraft. And yet, even since then, we've had at least two attempts to destroy aircraft by passengers who made it through all this new-fangled security.
And now, what's the big push?
Why, it's implementing full-body scanners that seem to be capable of reading a woman's "tramp stamp" tattoo, but which would NOT have been capable of figuring out the Crotchbomber had actually had a bomb under his clothes or his junk, for that matter.
But oh, man... is our president responding.... or WHAT?
Are planned airport scanners just a scam?New technology that Gordon Brown relies on for his response to the Christmas Day bomb attack has been tested – and found wanting
The explosive device smuggled in the clothing of the Detroit bomb suspect would not have been detected by body-scanners set to be introduced in British airports, an expert on the technology warned last night.
The claim severely undermines Gordon Brown's focus on hi-tech scanners for airline passengers as part of his review into airport security after the attempted attack on Flight 253 on Christmas Day.
The Independent on Sunday has also heard authoritative claims that officials at the Department for Transport (DfT) and the Home Office have already tested the scanners and were not persuaded that they would work comprehensively against terrorist threats to aviation.
The claims triggered concern that the Prime Minister is over-playing the benefits of such scanners to give the impression he is taking tough action on terrorism.
And experts in the US said airport "pat-downs" – a method used in hundreds of airports worldwide – were ineffective and would not have stopped the suspect boarding the plane.
del.icio.us
Google
Stumble Upon
YahooBuzz
Twitter
Independent MindsThe problem is that it's fairly clear that none of them will make any difference.
But then, he doesn't care if it does or not.
He only cares that you THINK it does.
.
1 comment:
When we are really serious about stopping terrorists from getting on airplanes, we'll follow the lead of Israel's El Al.
Post a Comment