Intrusive pat-downs, strip-searches, and body scans
far too high a price to pay for political correctness:
70% favor advanced terrorist profiling techniques instead
far too high a price to pay for political correctness:
70% favor advanced terrorist profiling techniques instead
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| Boiling Frog Post |
The Obammunist regime has this little habit of acting like there's simply no alternative to their heavy-handed statist ways -be it health care, bailouts, or air travel safety- while slandering opponents that dare bring any reality to the debate. But the TSA's x-ray/pat-down/or $11,000 fine oppression of US airline passengers has many thinking this long holiday weekend that there's got to be another way... and there is.
TSA Chief John Pistole has come right out and said that the reason all American air-travelers are being treated like criminals for the privilege of travelling in their own country is that we "Americans don't profile". In other words, the United States steadfastly refuses to adopt the world-class behavioral/background profiling techniques developed in Israel over the last 40 years... a comprehensive and proven system that's been offered to the US repeatedly, and one even Mr Pistole himself refers to as "top notch".
In the last three decades, the Israeli national carrier El Al
-arguably the largest terrorist target on the planet- has suffered exactly zero terrorist attacks. There has never been an El Al plane hijacked out of Israel's Ben Gurion Airport- contrast this to eight hijackings originating in the US for Delta Airlines alone (prior to 9/11).
When the idea of us having a similarly top-notch system was bounced-off Robert Gibbs this week, he avoided the essential profiling debate entirely by speciously claiming the methods wouldn't scale up- when we all know that's not it. Like any recovering alcoholic can tell you, the first thing you've got to do is face the reality of your problem... something clearly not happening within this administration on a number of issues
But racially-obsessed Third-World-romanticizer Obama needs to be told in no uncertain terms that enough is enough... it's time that we not just consider -but demand- a practical and effective alternative to his all-out assault on our Fourth Amendment rights:
The Transportation Security Administration's demeaning new "enhanced pat-down" procedures are a direct result of the Obama administration's willful blindness to the threat from Islamic radicals.
While better tools are available to keep air travelers safe, they would involve recognizing the threat for what it is, which is something the White House will never do.
While better tools are available to keep air travelers safe, they would involve recognizing the threat for what it is, which is something the White House will never do.
El Al, Israel's national airline, employs a smarter approach. Any airline representing the state of Israel is a natural - some might say preeminent - target for terrorist attacks. Yet El Al has one of the best security records in the world and doesn't resort to wide-scale use of methods that would under other circumstances constitute sexual assault.
The Israelis have achieved this track record of safety by employing sophisticated intelligence analysis which allows them to predict which travelers constitute a possible threat and which do not. Resources are then focused on the more probable threats with minimal intrusion on those who are likely not to be terrorists.
Here in the United States, these sophisticated techniques have roundly been denounced as discriminatory "profiling." Allegedly postracial America has been unable to come to grips with the difference between immoral and illegal racial discrimination and the prudent use of the types of techniques that police on the beat use every day, which is similar to practices the customs service applies to assessing which packages being sent into the country are licit and which were sent by smugglers.
TSA believes an 80-year-old grandmother deserves the same level of scrutiny at an airport terminal checkpoint as a 19-year-old male exchange student from Yemen. This policy not only is a waste of time and resources, it denies reality.
The new crotch-inspection policy is a direct result of al Qaeda underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed attempt to take down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 last Christmas. At the time, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said, in masterful doublespeak, "Once the incident occurred, the system worked."
However, the incident itself was a symptom of systemic failure. Abdulmutallab's name was on various watch lists. He had traveled to Yemen to network with al Qaeda. Warnings concerning him had been received from Yemen and Britain. His father had even attempted to notify the United States about the coming attack. None of this made an impression.
Despite all the government bureaucracy and TSA's intrusive inspection practices, Abdulmutallab's attack was only foiled because of a faulty bomb and the actions of alert passengers.
Now all passengers have to pay the price by having their privacy (and their privates) invaded, which is the Obama administration's alternative to instituting a policy that will target the source of the problem. Indeed, they refuse to admit that a Muslim problem exists.
Now all passengers have to pay the price by having their privacy (and their privates) invaded, which is the Obama administration's alternative to instituting a policy that will target the source of the problem. Indeed, they refuse to admit that a Muslim problem exists.
Wholly-effective while avoiding needless molestation of 3-year-old boys and D-cup women, the Israeli system also does not rely on strip-searches or body scans. Rather, it employs simple common sense to focus on those who come from troublesome regions and/or act like a terrorist- how 'bout that.
And it's really not all based on race as is widely assumed. What they do is focus on people -not objects so much as we do:
Michael Totten writing in the New York Post (highlights RR):
Terrorists have yet to use the same weapon twice, and the TSA isn't even looking for whatever they'll try to use next. I can think of all sorts of things a person could use to wreak havoc on a plane that aren't banned.
Security officials should pay less attention to objects, and more attention to people. The Israelis do. They are, out of dreadful necessity, the world's foremost experts in counterterrorism. And they couldn't care less about what your grandmother brings on a plane.
Instead, officials at Ben Gurion International Airport interview everyone in line before they're even allowed to check in.
And Israeli officials profile. They don't profile racially, but they profile.
Israeli Arabs breeze through rather quickly, but thanks to the dozens of dubious-looking stamps in my passport -- almost half are from Lebanon and Iraq -- I get pulled off to the side for more questioning every time. And I'm a white, nominally Christian American.
If they pull you aside, you had better tell them the truth. They'll ask you so many wildly unpredictable questions so quickly, you couldn't possibly invent a fake story and keep it all straight. Don't even try. They're highly trained and experienced, and they catch everyone who tries to pull something over on them.
Because I fit one of their profiles, it takes me 15 or 20 minutes longer to get through the first wave of security than it does for most people. The agents make up for it, though, by escorting me to the front of the line at the metal detector.
They don't put anyone into a "porn machine." There's no point. Terrorists can't penetrate that deeply into the airport. The Israeli experience isn't pleasant, exactly, and there's a lot not to like about it. It can be exasperating for those of us who are interrogated more thoroughly.
The system has its advantages, though, aside from the fact that no one looks or reaches into anyone's pants. Israelis don't use security theater to make passengers feel like they're safe. They use real security measures to ensure that travelers actually are safe.
Even when suicide bombers exploded themselves almost daily in Israeli cities, not a single one managed to get through that airport...
Some say Obama's heavy-handed approach -where the affirmative-action-staffed TSA gets to put whitey up against the wall- is yet one more chapter in a bizarre racial agenda. I don't know about that, but the Barack Obama has made perfectly clear that he will put us through just about anything to avoid offending groups seen as "cool" in his warped world-view. About the only humiliation left to inflict upon us is cavity searches...
intrade taking bets yet on when that kicks-in?
intrade taking bets yet on when that kicks-in?
Of course, this President -who has bowed to a Saudi King while openly contemptuous of Israel- would likely only make such a change under substantial political pressure... and this is a guy that doesn't consider massive public opposition to be substantial.
But far better the resurgent GOP attempt to force Obama's hand on this before events conspire to do the same at a far higher price to our country and/or liberty.
So as Americans endure a most unbearable travel season 2010, the time is now to bring a change in TSA strategy if we possibly can, the public support is there... a fresh WaPo poll says 70% of Americans favor implementation of Israeli-style profiling.
Unlike the 'Progressive' Left, Republicans would be actually giving the people what they want... just how democracy is supposed to work, and a glaring contrast that's a huge political winner heading-on-into 2012.
Although my congressman is a hopeless liberal twit of the worst kind... I wrote anyway, it is a matter of life-and-death:
Contact your Representative quickly -here-
-Happy Thanksgiving from Reaganite Republican-
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