With all the foofaraw (sorry for the technical language) over the Transportation Security Administration's new full-body scans, it seems people have forgotten a basic premise of terrorism: As soon as law-enforcement figures out how to thwart one tactic, the bad guys just come up with a new one. Since these Pillsbury-Doughboy-esque renditions of the human form theoretically prevent people from boarding planes with explosives woven into their underwear, attackers will simply come up with a new method. We only half-sarcastically express a fear of edible explosives. Why not? For that matter, since Al Qaeda and its ilk have discovered they can cause untold billions of dollars worth of economic misery simply with a failed attack on cargo planes, why would they bother to try outsmarting the latest high-tech security system? Why do we bother with semi-prurient x-rays of those headed for flyover country?
There has to be a better way.
NONE of the steps taken thus far are IN ANY WAY deigned to truly thwart terrorists. EVERY country (led by Israel, who really should know) tells us that the only way to really do it is to profile terrorist and act on that profile... but that's not PC. Moreover, if these steps were necessary (because of the "underwear" bomber) WHY DID WE WAIT A YEAR BEFORE STARTING THEM!? And WHY, Oh, WHY, has it taken 9 yerars for us to even begin to seriously check all packages (which causes some annoyance to BIG CORPORATIONS)?!? As long as politics trumps security (yes, Mr KYL, we mean you) we can only HOPE to be safe.
ReplyDeleteHilarious - so true, they can just focus on failed attacks and laugh all the way to the bank while the rest of us get pointlessly groped.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous: We'll keep our fingers crossed.
ReplyDelete@HPH: Just to be clear: We're not actually complaining about the groping. . . .