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Defending this nation is difficult. What woud YOU do?
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Since you asked...
1. Immediately start an investigation of the procedures that the TSA used (or didn't use) at the airports from which those planes originated.
2. Meanwhile I would have the FBI examining the bags in order to track down who put them there. We need to determine if they are truly a threat.
3. At the end of the investigation into the TSA, I would have determined the following information:
A) Was a procedure that is in place not followed? And if
so who didn't follow it.
B) Could a new procedure help plug this hole? If a new
procedure could prevent it again is this procedure
consistent with the DOCUMENTS THAT RULE THIS
COUNTRY.
4. By this time the FBI should have indentified who did this,
and possibly brought charges against them.
5. If there was a procedure in place that could have prevented
this, and it was not followed. Then this to me would
amount to Dereliction of Duty by those TSA Officers who
were working at the time. The workers involved would be
identified and fired, and they would be charged with the
same thing the guys with the box cutters were.
6. If a new procedure is needed then it would be implemented
in a manner consistent with the values that this country
was established on.
I agree that defending a nation is hard, but the problem as I see it is that we are spending our time being reactive and not proactive. This is about the millionth time something like this has happened, and nothing has changed on the part of the TSA. It took a real terrorist almost blowing a hole in a plane wth explosives in his shoes to force a change the last time. It took two airliners destroying a larger portion of NY before people got their heads out of the sand and realized that these nut jobs in the Middle East had a serious problem with us.
The problem, however, is that what changed was this:
Ordinary citizens are losing their rights. Yes their rights. People say, "I'm tired of hearing people bitch about their rights!" Well you know what? We all live here because someone in our ancestry got tired of not having any rights.
We went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of "Terrorism" and "Homeland Security". Bush claims to have rooted out terrorism in those countries, yet 3 more Americans were killed today in Iraq and the Taliban is regrouping in the mountains of Afghanistan.
We have no idea where Bin Laden or Saddam are. I know we're looking, but we're also looking for those WMD's that Saddam had, and I may be mistaken on this, but didn't Bush or one of his cabinent members say that Iraq wasn't about WMD's?
We created the TSA, but they are not accountable to anyone. They almost operate above the law.
Finanly I know the FBI Agents are just grunts doing their job. It's their leadship that have pretty much donned the black boots and Swastikas (no not Bush).
As I've said before airport security is truly a joke. Spend an hour watching the TSA in action (or inaction) and you'll see what I mean. If anything it's just bad security IMHO. I could go to the airport and watch the TSA for hours, study their methods, figure out high times and low times, I could even buy a ticket to someplace and case the concourse if I wanted to. The TSA only exists at the security check point. Strange huh that they assume that everything is secure after the check point. In IT they have multiple layers of security. Shouldn't it be the same for airports.
My thoughts are this:
Put the TSA workers that really aren't doing anything, in plain clothes and have them walking the concourses. What's that you say, "they aren't qualified to do that?" Well no kidding. Maybe they should hire some people who are qualified. You know it works for Wal-Mart.
The way I see it the security check point and the baggage screening is what should catch the gross problems (i.e. guns, knives, etc.). But we have nothing right now that catches the details.
So there, that what I would do...since you asked.
Naunga