Air traffic controllers have been catching a lot of grief for sleeping on the job lately. But do you know what Transportation Security Administration officials have been doing — or rather, not doing — lately? A federal watchdog revealed this week that TSA’s counterterrorism specialists failed to detect 16 separate jihad operatives who moved through target airports “on at least 23 different occasions.” The name of the TSA monitoring program paying for all this flying-blind failure, I kid you not:
SPOT.
Under the “Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques” plan, TSA’s designated behavior detection officers are supposed to closely watch travelers who pose potential security risks and who exhibit any number of appearances or activities “indicative of stress, fear, or deception.” But long-entrenched, bipartisan American political correctness hampers the kind of effective, efficient national security profiling that Israeli airline security officials practice so well.
The result? TSA’s snoozing SPOT-ters catch nobody — for fear of being accused by the grievance lobby of singling anybody out.
Stephen Lord, who specializes in homeland security issues at the Government Accountability Office, reviewed Justice Department documents showing that “in December 2007 an individual who later pleaded guilty to providing material support to Somali terrorists boarded a plane at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport en route to Somalia. Similarly, in August 2008, an individual who later pleaded guilty to providing material support to al Qaeda boarded a plane at Newark Liberty International Airport en route to Pakistan to receive terrorist training to support his efforts to attack the New York subway system.”
Other terror suspect travelers who slipped through the cracks have been subsequently tied to the 2008 Mumbai bombings; the plots to attack a Quantico, Va., Marine base and New York City infrastructure; and an attack by a Pakistani-trained American jihadi on an Afghanistan base.
The November 2010 issue of Al Qaeda's slick & glossy magazine, available at
http://publicintelligence.net/complete-inspire-al…
contains, amidst exhortations to join the houris in Paradise, a nice overview of how to waltz through TSA explosives detection equipment.
"Didn’t your security experts come together to find solutions for the security lapses in your airports and you spent millions of dollars in less than a year even though we already told you then that we knew the weak points of your equipment and by the will of Allah we would be able to exploit them?"
Perhaps our cunning plan is that persistent, blockheaded TSA stupidity will make the jihad boys so cocky that they will get careless in their terrorist operations. Let's hope so, because only amateurs are going to be stopped by Janet Napolitano methods.
I mean, who knew that walking CAIR executive leadership and their "aides" through the secure areas of airports by the FBI, showing off their "security features" might SOMEHOW get back to those who name themselves the enemy?
Actually, the reason that the Islamic world, not AQ as AQ is a proxy of the Islamic world, continues to taunt us incessantly, is because they want us to continue to remain mentally paralyzed by the memory of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as the Bush administration reacted to the 9/11 terrorist attacks about as idiotic as it possibly could. Indeed, since the Islamic world can never hope to defeat us via military power alone, their main goal has always been to entice the USA into financially self-destructing and judging by our insane responses to the 9/11 terrorist attacks so for and considering the piss poor financial condition the USA is in today, everything they intended is fast coming to fruition.
The solution is not to massively increase the size of the federal government as Bush did or to chase hydra headed terrorists in far away Muhammadan countries in pursuit of endless and never ending fantasy based nation-building missions to win the hearts and minds of Muhammadans who are obligated to have nothing but enmity in their hearts for unbelievers, as those things play right into the hands of the Islamic world. Indeed, the solution is not to intervene in Muhammadan civil wars or to stop Muhammadan on Muhammadan violence on humanitarian grounds either. The solution is to use common sense to ban and reverse Muhammadan immigration since zero Muhammadans equals zero Islamic terrorist attacks and to acknowledge the reality that Islam is not a religion but instead a militant theo-political totalitarian ideology that seeks to subjugate the world into draconian Islamic totalitarianism via the imposition of Sharia.
I'm a muslima trapped in a Jewish man's body. Respect my religion AND gender indentity. I'll just search myself if you don't mind. Oh. And if you DO mind, I'll just call one of the terrorist supporters at the terrorist supporting islamic terror supporting organization cair.
Meh, this is what happens when you unionize the TSA. We get what we deserve for going back to pre- 9/11 thinking.
My airport security program keeps me safe, I do not fly the friendless skies
anywhere. With the price of gas going up and up it's like flying on the ground,
what fun but that's another conundrum. There is danger everywhere and it
does not take forever to figure out who to be wary of and who to check out,
but until PC is shot down we remain insulted, abused and hosted by grand
incompetence gratis the Obama administration. I wonder if we will ever
have right thinking people in charge, I hope to live to see it…………William
Amen!
i'm one of those 70 something and with a pace maker, to boot. the useless doa screeners are a travesty. no wonder america is no longer respected.. most of the things done by this government are useless, stupid, and as in this case– detrimental. obama cares about the unions who will contribute to his election campaign. the rest of us, well, we don't matter.
I think we matter, but why do we keep accepting this behavior from the government?
And so do I.
Janet Napolitano recently declared that the Israeli system of airport security cannot work in the United States. What she failed to admit was that the reason this is so is that while Israeli security is in the hands of intelligent, well-trained, well-educated, highly observant people who know what they're looking for and how to recognize it, American airport security is in the hands of orangutans. Exceptionally stupid and unobservant ones.
When flying ElAl, either out of Ben Gurion or from cities around the world, I've never felt cause to worry about my safety. In this country, today, with TSA in charge, I won't board a plane without first being certain that my will is up to date, my affairs are in order, and my life insurance policies are on top of my desk at home, where they can be immediately found.
In its ongoing, great slobbering love affair with political correctness, the government is playing Russian Roulette with our lives. In every way possible they are failing in their responsibilities to us, and with the unionization of TSA– something that was NEVER supposed to occur– we have essentially been told two things:
1) that what happens to us is nowhere near as important as is protecting the jobs of the incompetent, and
2) our current administration either has no interest at all in protecting this country (a very real possibility, the evidence of which grows daily), or is sufficiently moronic as to believe that a policy of shaking down and humiliating elderly ladies and terrifying small children into spasms of tears and screaming will convince would-be terrorists that the TSA means business.
With the last few attempts we've been blessed with incredible luck, but one day when the TSA is busy feeling up a middle-aged businessman or diligently exploring what's going on within the underwire bra of a well-endowed young woman, a young man who meets all the criteria for a potential terrorist (or would, if– god forbid!– we were profiling) will, without being given a second glance, board a plane and be both prepared and equipped to blow it out of the sky– and he'll do so. Because sooner or later, one of them is going to get it right.
And when that inevitable disaster takes place, amid the hailstorm of excuses, the finger-pointing duels, and the bloat of blue ribbon commissions appointed to "study" how and where the failure in security took place, the one thing of which we can be certain is that, no matter what else happens, thanks to the Obama administration the safely unionized TSA will sail merrily on–as it is today– not doing its job.
Anyone with at least a half a brain and a modicum of common sense knows that no matter how much money we spend, how much we expand and grow the federal government, how many additional layers of inconvenient security measures we add, and how many more freedoms and inalienable rights we are forced to sacrifice in the name of national security, as long as we have millions of Muhammadans living in America with thousands of mosques and madrassas, the Islamic world can hit us again anytime they want at will. Does anyone really believe that the 9/11 terrorist attacks would have been possible without millions of Muhammadan immigrants with their thousands of mosques and madrassas already present in the USA to provide them cover?
Indeed, Bush with his Islam is a Religion of Peace™ being hijacked by a tiny minority of so-called extremists (read devout Muhammadans) mantra practically doubled the size of the federal government and federal spending with the creation of the massive Department of Homeland Security and the humongous National Intelligence Directorate ostensibly to protect the homeland from Islamic terrorist attacks, but in actuality to continue accommodating mass Muhammadan immigration with all its excess baggage by creating a false sense of security.
I hate to rain on everyone’s parade who naively believes the homeland is safer thanks to Bush, but the reason we haven’t been hit again with another mega terrorist attack is not because growing the government and sacrificing freedoms and inalienable rights is the solution, but instead because the Islamic world simply didn’t want to hit us again so soon after 9/11. Lest the American people become fed up and demand that Islam be outlawed and Muhammadan immigration be banned and reversed.
It’s one thing to perpetrate small and scattered terrorist attacks here and there that seem isolated, but mega terrorist attacks that impact the whole country could possibly have dire consequences for the Islamic world, since they fully intend to subjugate us via stealth and deceptive non-violent demographic conquest.
The only common sense solution is to acknowledge the truth about Islam, that Islam isn’t a religion. That it is instead a militant theo-political totalitarian ideology that seeks as its main goal the subjugation of the world into draconian Islamic totalitarianism via the imposition of Sharia, and in that regard Islam is very similar to Communism in that like Communism, it seeks world domination and the end result of Islam, like Communism, is also totalitarianism.
Hence, the only solution is to outlaw Islam and to ban and reverse Muhammadan immigration ASAP, as zero Muhammadans in America equates to zero Islamic terrorist attacks. Indeed, during the Cold War we didn’t allow millions of Communists to immigrate and infiltrate our country because that would have been suicidal. Similarly we shouldn’t let millions of Muhammadans immigrate and infiltrate our country today because that is likewise suicidal.
I flew through Chicago and there was a long long line getting up to the TSA check area so TSA simply instructed their prescreeners (the ones who actually check your ID and that you have a ticket) to waive people through without ID checks to get baggage screened. I watched this happen repeatedly as I snaked through the line. Finally, I got up to the front and I got carded by a young Somali looking black man (clearly not look like a American Black), probably age 22 whose name was Mohammed. If TSA is hiring the profile of a terrorist to find terrorists don't we have a problem Houston?
If TSA is hiring the profile of a terrorist to find terrorists don't we have a problem Houston?
That’s the problem with the expansion of government. First of all, overly political correct loons have hijacked it, and second it is totally incompetent.