TSA CREATES TEMPTING TERRORIST TARGETS

Security checks designed to keep terrorists off of planes leave hundreds of passengers waiting in line open to bomb or machine gun attacks

The terrorists have won. Americans have been so frightened that they are willing to put up with nonsensical security checks at the nation’s airports. Women in their 70s and 80s have been forced to remove their shoes in a search for bombs. Kids six years and younger have been padded down for weapons and even babies have had their diapers frisked for bombs.

The TSA security checks have led to chaotic situations with long lines that require passengers to arrive at airports two or more hours before their departure time or risk missing their flights. The lines keep getting longer and longer and more and more passengers are missing their flights. Since February, some 4,000 passengers have missed their flights at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport alone. TSA blames the long lines on a shortage of screeners and a large turnover of personnel.

Bedlam occurred Sunday at O’Hare, with thousands of people waiting in crowded security check lines for three or more hours. More than 400 passengers missed their flights and many of those spent the night in the lobby on cots furnished by the airlines. All this because every boarding passenger is treated as if they were a terrorist preparing to bomb or hijack a domestic flight.

Homeland Security claims that boarding airline passengers want their fellow passengers to be screened. But is this the kind of screening they really want? If they do, it’s only because they are unaware there are much better and less intrusive ways of making sure their flight will be safe.

Anti-terrorism experts agree that all those measures are silly and ineffective. Those experts tell us that all of the airline hijackers and bombers have been MALE, MUSLIM and JIHADIST. This means that 99 percent of the flying public is being subjected to unnecessary anti-terrorism measures.

Anti-terrorism experts also agree that the most effective protection against airline hijackers and bombers is PASSENGER PROFILING.

Every Jihadist in the world dreams of blowing up an Israeli El Al airliner, yet not one El Al plane has ever been brought down by a terrorist. How come? The Israelis rely on passenger profiling and they run extensive background checks on every passenger from the time they buy their tickets until the time they board their plane. Passenger profiling would have led the Israelis to prevent anyone who purchased a one-way ticket, paid for it in cash, and had little or no baggage from ever boarding a plane.

But passenger profiling is too much like racial profiling. In fact, the Department of Transportation expressly forbids TSA screeners from profiling passengers. One month after 9/11, the Department of Transportation issued guidelines forbidding its personnel from generalizing ‘about the propensity of members of any racial, ethnic, religious or national origin group to engage in unlawful activity.' So, in order not to hurt the feelings of people who look like they may be of Middle Eastern origin or who are Muslims, political correctness is subjecting 99 percent of the flying public to silly anti-terrorism measures.

More importantly, has anyone at Homeland Security or TSA given any thought that their passenger screening creates tempting targets for terrorists. Can you imagine what a field day the Brussels terrorists would have had had they found the lobby of the Brussels airport packed with passengers in the same way the O’Hare lobby was packed with passengers waiting to be screened?

If a suicide bomber had gotten in line at O’Hare and set off his bomb, more people could have been killed than if he had downed an airliner. And a couple of San Bernardino-style terrorists could have sprayed the passengers waiting in line with machine gun fire, killing and wounding scores before being brought down by police gunfire.

TSA likes to brag about all the guns they’ve seized from boarding passengers. But none of those guns were seized from would-be plane hijackers. They were seized from ordinary Americans who habitually arm themselves for personal protection and probably were not consciously aware they were still carrying those guns as they stood in line waiting to be screened.

When, if ever, is the Department of Transportation going to unleash its screeners and allow them to adopt the Israeli method of passenger profiling? When is TSA going to stop treating every boarding airline passenger as if they were a terrorist? When is TSA going to stop creating tempting terrorist targets?