Keystone Home Land Security

At the risk of sounding nothing less than a right wing nut, it is time to get serious with the terrorist screening thing. An excellent point was made on ABC Sunday morning news show. After that nut tried to blow up a plane with his shoes, the whole flying population needed to take off their shoes. Now we have but another nut, this one with exploding underwear. We can only imagine what are crack home land security team will come up for this one. Funny, no senior white American has been caught with exploding shoes or underwear. The folks attempting to rain havoc on us are radical Islamics who have known links to radical teachings. Hmm. The facts present us with a serious problem expressed in a single question. Should we scrap the bulk of airport security and start focusing on the supposed 500,000 individuals who present threats? Do we have too many “security” personnel and not enough computer specialists scanning and cross referencing visas applications, passports, driver licenses and other documents that are needed for travel with known threat factors. This all out assault on the flying population in the name of security is nothing short than a bureaucratic overreaction. Folks it is time to profile! The reason behind this action is rather simple.

How many times have we heard that we are at war. Hell, we went into Iraq, and we are now ramping up our presence in Afghanistan. To what end? Our leaders tell we must fight the ghouls who are out to destroy us. Now, this war thing is an interesting reference. At one point, we justified torture with this logic. And torture is a bit more harsh that profiling. Now combine the logic of a war with profiling. If we can bomb with sketchy information or even solid information, why don't we apply that same logic to screening at the airports or any other entry point favored by those who feel killing innocent people is a means to an end. Back in the day, when computers were becoming an integral element in our life. We had the old card system. Some may recall the old notice on official documents that warned not to deface the card. Well, all those cards were put into a sorter and alas out of a population of millions, the cards were properly sorted. A spokesperson commenting on the last incident noted that there are 500,000 or more people on the watch list. Well that is who we should focus our attention, not the millions of others who are just trying to get one place to another. Because we were screening the millions, the one out of 500,000 got through the net. What if we had just focused on the 500,000?

What is intelligence? Isn't it identifying potential threats? To return to an earlier question and answer it we need only stop, search, detain, and possibly arrest those who fit the profile and are hellbent on creating havoc. I shouldn't have to take off my shoes nor should any senior citizen. But anyone who is on the list should be pulled aside and strip search, now that they are planting bombs in their shorts. My god, this whole security thing we got going helps not hinders the terrorists. All these sick souls need to do is to outsmart the keystone procedures that are in place. The solution to stopping terrorism is to identify terrorists and not put the entire world under the microscope of supposed security. We need to get real and stop playing the political correctness card. We need real analysts not keystone cops.