The Required Underpants Terrorist Post

Brought to you by “The Stupid Agency”. (a great title of a must read post by Professor Bainbridge)

A couple of things to note here.
No matter what list a person is on or not on,
young Muslim men buying tickets to the US
with cash and
without luggage
should get a second screening. Hello??

The main thing the 9/11 report noticed is that bits of information were never connected. What in this incident shows that things have changed?
A young Muslim man, who was given a multi-entrance VISA, who has been to Yemen, who’s own connected and reasonable dad suggests he could be a problem, maybe should be looked into before said VISA expires.

If “the system” in place is actually, “assume someone else will take care of this problem”, is the system, then yes, “the system worked”. Sadly, it didn’t work with Hasan. Napolitano needs to be part of the unemployment numbers.

The new fix is not a fix.

The underpants dude didn’t use anything out of his carry on bag.

The underpants dude didn’t do anything in the bathroom other than get ready to die.

The underpants dude didn’t have a paperback in his lap. It won’t help now that you won’t either.

The passengers around the underpants dude did as they were told which is to say, they stayed in their seats. A man 3 rows behind the underpants dude decided that maybe saving the plane would be worth getting into trouble with the stewardess for disconnecting his seat belt. How will making a rule that everyone must remain in their seat help?

It doesn’t help to expand a watch list that is not actually watched.

And finally, by immediately treating this as a criminal thing vs an act of war – in spite of the confession by the underpants dude – we now do not get to question said dude without his lawyer present. Maybe this “new” way will help us win the hearts and minds of jihadists, but I’m pretty sure they mean what they say when they suggest that jihad is about killing the infidel and not about Abu Graib or civil liberties at Gitmo.

Back to the first link…..feeling helpless is horrible. Being made uncomfortable and even more inconvenienced does not make us less helpless. We have actual tools at our disposal including psychology. TSA has about 15 people you walk through at those screening areas. Each of those minimally paid people knows that they will not actually be responsible for anything because there are 14 others that surely ‘would have caught it’ if it was a problem. Reduce that number, pay them better, train them more, allow them to profile, use technology, and did I mention fire Napolitano.