Our National Security Sham

So, this news is all over the place today; the following from ABC News:''

"An internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials, ABC News has learned."

You know exactly how people with access to the national media are going to react to this:  endless demands that we sacrifice another huge chunk of our rights to provide us with "security" from the evil Muslims that are swarming all over our country, just trying to kill us anywhere they can.

Well, I have another message from this news. Apparently, given the 95% failure rate, we never needed all the sham security at our airports at all, since they have been abysmally failing for over a decade now, and yet no one has managed to attack us. 

As far as I have been able to tell, the whole nonsense at our airports never had any purpose but to con the American people into thinking the government was doing something real to keep us safe.  I remember the Bush administration totally blocking efforts to increase security at chemical plants, and its collaboration with shipping companies to frustrate increased port security.  As I calculated a few years ago, the following is a totally reasonable scenario thanks to this failure:  Currently, you can buy a used shipping container for about $2200.00.  If you were to load three of these containers with explosives or anthrax or God knows what, and ship them to the United States, with the current rate of inspection, the odds that all three would be found would be about one in 20,000.  But believe me, no one is getting on an airplane with a shoe bomb.

But the screams for more and more intrusions into our lives will undoubtedly be as loud as the screams for war with Iraq, so the result will be more hundreds of billions wasted for nothing, and not a millisecond when the real issues of our security will be dealt with.

Comments

Jerry Critter said…
"Apparently, given the 95% failure rate, we never needed all the sham security at our airports at all..."

No apparently about it. What further proof is needed?

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