The Underwear Bomber

The failed bombing of Northwest 253 by a Nigerian man with alleged ties to Al Qaeda has ignited a firestorm of debate about airport security. The TSA for their part has put into place new security measures, including requiring passengers to stay in their seat and not have anything in their lap for the last hour of the flight, and more stringent searches.

These measures have been criticized from both sides of the political spectrum as knee-jerk and ineffective. One longtime airline pilot and staunch conservative commented,

“The knee-jerk reactive hour-long 'seat-pan-ban' prior to landing was one of the dumbest things to come along for quite a while ... what if the guy decided to 'go boom' @ hour '5' on a 10-hour TransPac ... ???"

Another pilot and conservative described his recent experience with airport security,

“I just flew United from BKK-NRT and they turned off the in-flight entertainment system (and I was in Biz class too! With a 19" screen!) for "security reasons". At first I thought this was some cop out excuse because the system was actually broken. However, as it turned out United enacted this policy in response to the attempted "terror" attack, apparently because a potential bad guy could monitor the plane's location on the in-flight GPS map deal that's

displayed. Never mind he could also just TIME the flight and get a fair estimation as to the plane's position along a great circle route...

I swear, every time some yahoo lights his shoe or pants on fire, we spend millions of dollars and waste millions of people's hours in unnecessary and pointless, knee-jerk, feel good, BS security measures that accomplish nothing. Yeah, the Crotch-Rocket Man didn't bring down the plane or hurt anyone else, but he never the less accomplished Al Qaeda's goal of enormously disrupting our lives. Who is the real enemy here? A bunch of lunatics who haven't had a solid plan in years, or our own fear?”

It is interesting to note however that, had this terrorist succeeded in blowing up the plane, (as media outlets have reported that he had enough explosive to do) these same conservatives would probably be calling for strikes against targets in Yemen, where the terrorist was allegedly trained, as Senators Lieberman and Specter appeared to do on Fox News Sunday.

It is my view that the TSA is more of an illusion of security than actual security. Walking through a metal detector is not going to catch chemicals sewn into clothing that, when combined, are explosive. The level of security that would be needed to catch everything would be draconian and an unacceptable violation of privacy. Full body scans, (which display private parts in detail) pat downs for every passenger, and hand searches of all bags in addition to x-ray screenings.

Remember the old joke where people said that they were glad Richard Reid (the shoe bomber) wasn’t known as the underwear bomber?

This guy was the underwear bomber.