Added Security, schmadded Schmeschurity
Look, the security apparatus that we have in place did not fail us on Christmas day when a Nigerian dude with a bomb strapped to his junk tried to blow up a plane. The Intelligence was there, he was on a watch list. The problem was that he was let through. That he had the exact same plan and M.O. as Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber”, had–and no one was the wiser.
Not having beefy-enough security is not what failed us on 9/11 either. What failed us was the fact the FBI and CIA didn’t share information and the President never read the August 6th, 2001 memo entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike within US.”
If people would just do their jobs we wouldn’t have these problems. Plus, al Qaida keeps using retards and their poorly constructed explosive devices to blow up airliners. It is hard to make a binary explosive work in a controlled lab environment, let alone an 18″ wide, cramped airliner seat at 30,000ft.
I remember being in line at the airport after the liquid bomb suspects got busted in London and watching bottle, after bottle of liquid get poured out into a trash can by TSA employees. If you are so concerned about inert chemicals that when combined make and explosive then why are you pouring them out, thus combining them in a trash can?!?!
How much physical and human damage did the 9/11 hijackers cause us? The World Trade Center destroyed; a side of the Pentagon destroyed; four airliners destroyed; and 3,000 lives lost. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $19-25 billion in damages total. We have since spent several T-R-I-L-L-I-O-N dollars and an addition 5,000 or so lives on the wars and defense and security contracts to ensure that we don’t lose $20 billion again.
We could have focused on nothing but commando raids in Afghanistan to get Bin Laden and the Taliban would still control the 80% of the nation they control today.
Think of the “War on Terror” like mortgage securities derivatives. We spend trillions and end up a headache and less than we started with.
Here in Seattle we have Coastguard boats with 50cal machine guns chase the ferries to save us from bombers. We also have security sweeps and state troopers on the boats looking for suspicious materials left behind by disembarking passengers. In the automobile waiting line, bomb dogs sniff all the cars waiting to load onto the boat. This is nothing but a gigantic waste of time, money and resources. First, no one is going to bomb a ferry. Why? Because there are no passenger ferries in Middle America that everyone can be afraid of riding. Second, the Coastguard boats are useless because if anyone is going to blow up a ferry, they are going to do it from the inside. Third, security sweeps are pointless because we are dealing with SUICIDE bombers. They aren’t leaving any packages behind, they are going to be sitting with it hoping to blow up with everyone else and get their 72 virgins.
We are spending millions of dollars and wasting everyone’s time by putting all of our efforts into “feel good” security rather than actually doing what works. Things like detective work, intelligence gathering, sharing information, nation building…
Let’s make 2010 a lot less like the last decade, and start by just doing our jobs and being efficient about it.




