AIRPORT SECURITY: TAKE OFF YOUR UNDERWEAR

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian Islamist, only managed to burn himself while trying to blow up a Delta-Northwest airliner as it was nearing Detroit on Christmas Day. Umar left Lagos on a plane for Amsterdam where he then boarded the Northwest airliner. He had slipped past security with a packet containing PETN, a powerful explosive substance, sewn into his underwear. The passengers and crew were lucky that a faulty detonator apparently kept the PETN from exploding.

Umar managed to board his plane in Lagos and the one in Amsterdam without having his human bomb detected by airport security screeners. Which just goes to show that Airport security measures are likely to fail when someone is determined to blow up an airliner with explosives hidden on his person. David Brooks, a New York Times columnist, characterizes airport security as “a jobs program,” not a security program.

On Sunday morning, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos that when Umar tried to blow up the airliner, “the [security] system worked.” Ha, that’s a good one! Napolitano must take us all for a bunch of imbeciles. Some of the passengers restrained Umar while flight attendants used fire extinguishers to snuff out the flames. The system worked? What happened proved that the system failed! (Napolitano now claims she meant that all airports, airlines and law enforcement agencies were notified of this incident immediately after it occurred.)

Back in 2001, Richard C. Reid boarded a trans-Atlantic flight with PETN concealed in one of his shoes. Fortunately, when he tried to blow up the airliner, the shoe bomber only managed to give himself a hotfoot because the PETN in his shoe also failed to explode. Ever since that incident, passengers wanting to board an airliner have had to remove their shoes for a hands-on inspection by security screeners. Even 80-year-old grandmas, hardly the terrorist types, are having their shoes searched.

My question is: Now that we have had Umar trying to blow up an airliner with explosives sewn into his skivvies, will airport security screeners now require all boarding passengers, including those 80-year-old grandmas, to take off their underwear?