And where's Osama bin Laden?
We've been in Afghanistan for eight years at the cost of 821 American lives. We've been in Iraq (which not even Bush/Cheney claimed as a hidey-hole for bin Laden) for six at the cost of 4343 American lives (Source). We've spent ~$900B on military actions in those two countries. We've added billions of dollars in costs to our air travel system. We've inconvenienced millions of passengers who now have to surrender their shampoo and remove their shoes before boarding an airplane. Those same passengers now have to show up two or three hours ahead of their plane's departure just to satisfy all the security theater's requirements.
And the guy who leads the movement which brought all this on is still at large. Heckuva job, Bushie!
Posted by Linkmeister at September 11, 2009 08:29 AM | TrackBackYou are absolutely right. I think 95% of the hassling we endure at the airport is "theater" so the dumb folks among us will feel "safe."
Here's just one example. They make you surrender your shampoo or water bottle because they think there's some likelihood that it could be mixed with some other liquid to make, McGyver-style, a bomb powerful enough to bring down an airplane. Then they throw the shampoo or water bottle into a trash can full of a whole bunch of other bottles of similarly suspect liquids -- making the possibility of an explosion that much greater.
Except they know that it's all just for show. If they sensed the slightest danger, they'd handle all confiscated liquids as hazardous materials -- or even as possibly explosive materials.
If shampoo or a water bottle freaks them out then they should handle it like they would if it contains what they think it contains.
Posted by: Rob_in_Hawaii at September 11, 2009 01:33 PM@Rob_in_Hawaii, you are so right! For more proof of this: I realized the last time I went through the security line that my camera case (which I always take, and it goes through the Xray) contained a bottle with about 2 ounces of lens cleaner fluid! I removed it and threw it out, but I've had that lens cleaner fluid since probably 1992, NEVER put it in the quart baggie, and they've NEVER called me on it. Stupid. Like the time the Canadian equivalent of TSA confiscated my nail file, because it was 3 inches long and pointed. Feh.
Posted by: hedera at September 11, 2009 04:23 PM