Warning: Impolite language.  If you don't like it blunt and in-your-face, don't read this.

Oh gee, now we get this sort of complaint?

"Everyone is a little bit surprised that less than one year after a suicide bomber was sent to the United States to blow up a plane over Detroit with a bomb in his underwear we would be having the debate that we're having right now," another administration official said Monday.

Oh really?  Note the lack of a name on that comment.

I'll tell you why we're having this debate, as I have several times before:

• The scanners are a virtual strip search.  Maybe you think this is funny, but America does not.  Never mind the obvious attraction for certain deviants to that sort of job - you know, people who like to look at naked kids? 
  
  
• The scanners cannot prevent what was done.  The terrorists already know how to stick a bomb up their ass.  We know this because they did it in an attempt to kill a Saudi Prince.  The bomber underwent a very thorough search before being allowed in the same area with him.  His attack failed only because he didn't get close enough before he exploded.  These scanners, and indeed all scanners, are ineffective against such attacks.
  
  
• Since the point of terrorism is to cause terror, the more security theater you create and the longer the lines that result, the more likely it is that a terrorist will simply waltz into the line with a monster suicide vest on and blow himself up in the line before the scanner is reached.  This will kill dozens, injure hundreds and wreak total havoc on the US air transportation system.  There also is absolutely nothing that the government or anyone else can do to prevent that from happening.  That it hasn't happened is all the evidence I need that there simply aren't very many people in the world who are willing to blow themselves up in this sort of fashion.  That's a good thing, by the way.  The recent attempt to blow up planes with toner cartridges filled with explosives is a rather stark reminder that while the terrorists like to make things explode there aren't many (if any) of them that are keen to be first-party participants in the blowing-up part of the destruction.
  
  
• The underwear bomber was on a plane bound to the US without a valid passport and was known to be a threat.  DHS cleared that plane into US airspace knowing that it had an undocumented and threatening foreign passenger on board.  Who made that decision and why?  I've been asking this question for a year and so have others, but nobody will answer it despite the admission that they knew he was a risk.  The responsibility for that attempted attack IS ENTIRELY WITH OUR GOVERNMENT, NOT WITH A LACK OF SECURITY.  Note well that it is documented via sworn testimony that this guy was a known risk and our government refused to revoke his right to be in the United States because they were trying to "track a larger terrorist threat."  I guess they found what they were looking for eh? 
  
  
• The underwear bomber boarded a FOREIGN plane.  Why are we scanning inside the US?  Why don't we control our borders instead?  You know, worry about terrorists (people) instead of things (bombs)?
  
  
• There are much-less-intrusive means that work better to protect against bombs.  Dogs, specifically.  Profiling people, for example.  Have a dog sniff everyone who walks through the metal detector.  If he "hits" on someone, perform your secondary screening.  Bomb-sniffing dogs are a proven technology and they work.  So do the small portable "swab" automated GC machines that have been in airports forever.  I've had my laptop swabbed with one in the past - so what?  If you want to secondary screen someone the dog "hits" on use one of those things and swab people's clothes and hands.   But these techniques don't make Chertoff, the former DHS secretary, rich from "consulting fees" where scanners that irradiate us do.
  
  
• The DHS goons are IDIOTS to work near these machines.  They deserve every cancer they get, and they're going to get a lot of them.  Yeah, I know, they're "safe".  Uh huh.  Ionizing radiation is not safe in any dose.  Neither is the so-called "terahertz" radiation, although it acts via a different mechanism. 
  
  
• The DHS goons who complain about being verbally abused are idiots and responsible for their own actions.  Remember that the workers in the concentration camps claimed they were just following orders too - and it didn't save them from their just punishment.  What part of your job isn't voluntarily taken?  You don't like the pushback from abusing people?  Resign!  The people have a right to free speech whether it offends you or not.  If you're "offended" because you're feeling people up and they're calling you names, perhaps you need to re-think your vocational choice.  You have no right to feel people up and expect them not to react to it.  In fact, I think the people ought to shun you in your everyday, non-working life.  Maybe when you go to get your hair cut and the stylist demands the right to diddle your***** or crunch your nuts before he or she will cut your hair as a condition of the service you'll understand our point of view a bit better.

"Look honey, that's a nice woman there by the scanner (who's going to have uterine cancer in 20 years, but we won't tell her.)  Never mind the possible (probable?) pedophile in the next room that's going to see you naked in about 30 seconds.  Now be a good little girl and let the government look at all your private parts so we can go spend money at Disney World."

**** that.

Nobody wants to blow up during their flight. 

Where we differ is on the means of accomplishing this.

It is my contention that both 9/11 and the underwear bomber happened because our government refuses to perform its legally-mandated duty to control our border and the foreigners that seek to cross it.

In the case of 9/11, several of the terrorists were here on expired Visas.  That is, they were here without authorization, and our government still, ten years later, refuses to track those people down and expel them.  But for that failure and our government's willful refusal to investigate the goons that didn't want to know how to land planes at Florida flight schools, 9/11 would not have happened.

The underwear bomber got on a plane which was then cleared into US airspace by DHS and the FAA with the knowledge that the bomber was on board and lacked a valid passport.  Every person on the passenger manifest has a passport control number attached.  He did not, because he didn't present one, and someone at the departure airport personally overrode the airline's objections.

Despite repeated questions about this nobody has come clean about who was responsible for overriding the airline's procedures and how that plane came to be cleared into US airspace while a person with an obvious Arabic name who lacked valid documentation for entry into the US was on board.

Further, said underwear bomber boarded that plane outside the United States.  All the scanners in US airports cannot detect a bomb that comes onto a plane in a foreign land.

Finally, on 9/11 not one violation of airport and airline security rules occurred.  Not one bomb nor one gun was brought on board.  No prohibited item was used by the hijackers.  Box cutters were considered legitimate tools at the time and were permitted in hand-carried luggage.

Both of these attacks - the successful one on 9/11 and the unsuccessful attempt by the underwear bomber - occurred not due to security breaches but rather due to our government's abject stupidity.

We all want safe air travel.

Those of us who are not mindless idiots demand that you actually promote and provide policies and operational procedures that advance this goal, not enrich former government "ministers" in their consulting gigs while at the same time refusing to acknowledge and take responsibility for your government ****-ups, irradiating us and giving us a demonstrably false sense of security.

Until government policies make actual sense and the people responsible for the previous screw-ups are identified and expelled from the government, along with being held to account for their negligence or worse, I'm not flying.

I want to get there in one piece rather than exposing myself to being blown up by a jackass in the security line (who you can't stop with this bull**** set of so-called "procedures"), being irradiated by your so-called "screening device" that won't and can't detect the actual threats or being sexually assaulted by the government goon squad.