As with so many other things, I am right about airport security.  You focus on the passenger, not the weapon, to identify dangers to a flight. Of course, in this “new America” brought to us by our Presidential Moron and his band of Keystone Cops led by Janet the Dumbass Napolitano, that dog won’t hunt.  It’s much more important to piss off every single American by treating them all as equally criminal, than to piss off foreigners flying to (or in) this country (which is a privilege, not a right).

But Daniel Pipes highlights a great story about El Al – the safest airline in the galaxy – and how they thwarted a bombing in 1986.

You should read it.

And remember, I am right.

Maybe the intelligence community can't "connect the dots" because our buffoon of a president has the CIA tracking ice flows instead of camel jockey terrorists?

C.I.A. Is Sharing Data With Climate Scientists

President Obama is under fire for the failures of his administration in the events surrounding Flight 253.  He is taking particularly well-aimed fire from former Vice President Richard B. Cheney.  In response, our esteemed president quoted his inaugural address:

On that day, I made it very clear our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred, and that we will do whatever it takes to defeat them. . . . And make no mistake, that's exactly what we've been doing.

Which is a great bit of rhetoric.  Not quite as soaring as Churchill’s soaring oratory and firm conviction before the House of Commons on 13 May 1940:

I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering.

But all our President gave us “on that day” was soaring rhetoric unmatched by soaring actions.

The President has allowed a policy change at the Department of Homeland Security, put in place by the miserable hack failure Janet Napolitano, that declares that terrorism is a “man-caused disaster”.

Instead of promising policies for victory, he has promised deadlines for withdrawl.

He allowed a policy change in his Department of Justice that now treats war criminals and captured terrorists as criminal defendants subject to all of the protections of the Constitution, instead of as enemy prisoners of war.

He is transferring dangerous terrorists and other war criminals from a safe (and America’s most advanced) prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to a former state prison facility that will take nearly two years to “re-secure”, and by virtue of that transfer, places them safely in the jurisdiction of Federal judges and beyond the reach of appropriate military commissions.

He has negotiated with terrorists and terrorist-sponsoring states like Iran, providing Iran the wiggle-room and the time to further their efforts to design, develop, and deploy a nuclear arsenal.

Where in all of that is “doing whatever it takes to defeat them”? 

Once again, his teleprompter prowess fails to be met with action.

I have little regard for the so-called Transportation Security Administration.  I think our entire focus of airline security, focusing on objects rather than people, depending on a single line of defense instead of a defense in depth, and taking a low-bidder approach to staffing our airport security forces is stupid, venal, and politically-driven.  I call the TSA “Thousands Standing Around”.

Now, before I go on my latest harangue about the stupidity of the Federal Government (and one of it agencies), let me say that we cannot possibly hold the TSA responsible for the Gonad Bomber attack on Christmas Day, because the TSA does not operate in foreign countries. 

But I will call them out on their foolish Javert-like witch hunt against two bloggers who received and posted the new TSA security guidelines that were issued in the wake of the Christmas Day attack.  Issuing “administrative subpoenas”, seizing laptops, and threatening blogger’s livelihoods is not the actions of a government serving the governed.  Especially over a document that issues common-sense security directives that any unfortunate airline passenger could figure out in the time it takes them to take off their shoes.

The United States Government – and this goes for all those arrogant overpaid bureaucrats regardless of whether they work for a Republican or Democrat President – has an overinflated opinion of the cleverness of their security procedures for domestic airline flights.  I say this because so far, terrorists have used techniques only a generation removed from a caveman’s club to kill – or nearly kill – over 3,000 people.

Luckily, somewhere in that vast bureaucracy of Thousands Standing Around, some common sense (or dumb luck) seemed to prevail, and Thousands Standing Around has decided to “stand down” on the subpoenas.

Now if a more common sense approach to airline security could prevail, we might not be subjected to silly and ineffective patdowns for passengers who pose no threat to airline security.

There has been a lot of banter lately about airline security in light of the recent attempt to bring down a Delta/Northwest flight outside of Detroit using a gonad bomb, and the myriad of incredible failures in the system.  Some are even going so far as to say that you can never fully secure an airline flight.

And they are right.

But we surely can do a hell of a lot better, and we can do it without dramatically impinging on civil liberties (especially those of our own citizens) and turning airline travel in another circle of hell.  How, you ask?

Stop focusing on weapons, and start focusing on people.  This is what El Al does, and when was the last incident you heard about on an El Al flight?

The simple fact is almost anything in an airline cabin can be turned into a weapon or device to bring down a plane.  Any moron who has ever watched MacGyver or paid just a little attention in high school physics knows this.  To secure an airplane in this matter – limiting the threatening devices instead of the threatening people  -- is ludicrous.

I’ve detailed some ideas here.  Read it over.  My basic premise is this:  US citizens are less likely to bring down an airliner, so when flying back to the US, they get less scrutiny than a foreigner trying to fly here.  And you move up from there, building an increasing number of filters to sort through the passenger list.  Starting with biometrics (fingerprints, DNA) and moving toward are stringent search policy for non-US-passport holders is a good start.

My basic premise also comes from this fact:  foreigners do not possess any Constitutional rights by virtue of their citizenship, and therefore, are not protected against more grueling background checks and invasive search procedures.  Flying to the United States is not a right, it is a purchased privilege.

I want to point out that this is no xenophobia.  Not every non-citizen is a Muslim terrorist looking to bring down an airplane, and I think we should welcome foreigners to come to the United States for the purposes of travel and commerce.  But welcoming them does not mean we have to lay down and roll over to be screwed with our pants on.

Focus on the dangerous people.  Keep them off the plane, and no matter what else comes on the plane will not matter.

“My jihadist can beat up your honor roll President”.

What’s a camel sticker?  Well, they don’t have cars, but they do have camels. You figure it out.

The inestimable Jonah Goldberg has an excellent post over at The Corner on National Review Online about the different attitudes of and about John Ashcroft and Janet “The System Worked… Wait, It Didn’t So Much” Napolitano.

Fire her, now.  She is a hack. 

If it were up to me, here are the security procedures I would put in place for any airline traveler attempting to enter the United States not travelling on a US-issued passport:

1.  You must provide fingerprints, a DNA sample and two headshot photographs to the local US embassy at least four weeks prior to your flight and before receiving a visa for travel to the United States.

2.  You will undergo a full strip search at the airport before being allowed to enter any airplane (of any airline) travelling to the United States of America.

3.  Upon arrival at the customs checkpoint in the United States of America, you must provide a typewritten itinerary of where you will be staying, including phone numbers, addresses, and names of those you might be staying with. You will provide a second set of fingerprints and a second DNA sample to be compared to the first.

Information will be provided under penalty of perjury, which for those travelling to the United States on non-US-issued passports, will mean immediate expulsion. 

Violation of provision (or refusal to comply) will result in you being flown view C-130 on canvas jump seat to the US Air Force installation closest to your home country.

4.  You will not be afforded ANY constitutional rights in the event you commit – or attempt to commit – an act of terrorism.  You will be held as an enemy prisoner of war, subject to the appropriate articles of the Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Enemy Prisoners of War.

5.  Anyone attempting to fly to the United States, purchasing a one-way ticket with cash, must purchase said ticket through their local US Department of State facility a minimum of eight weeks prior to travel and undergo a full criminal background check.

6.  No person on any “watch list” of any type shall be allowed transit to the United States of America who does not hold a US-issued passport.

It’s been 48 hours since the famed “underwear bomber”, who in all his sophistication of building a gonad bomb was able to evade airline security searches, board a plane sans passport, all while on a watch list and purchasing a one-way ticket with cash, committed an act of terrorism in the skies over Michigan.  Yet we have not heard from the President of the United States yet?

Yes, the same man who could not help but interject himself into a local issue in Boston and turn it into a racial bon mot complete with beer with in the Rose Garden.

The same man who could never resist holding a press conference to discuss the great national concern over everything including the bezel color on his new teleprompter.

Yet the nation has been attacked, on a US-flag airline, over US soil, by a member of one Nigeria’s elite families, and the President is nowhere to be found. So where is he?

Playing golf.

Those of you who actually watched all of Farenheit 911 might recall that fat slobosaurus and whiny little prag Michael Moore mocked President Bush for responding to a reporter’s question about a terrorist attack in another country while on a golf course.  So where is the Poster Child for Banning Super Sized Meals on President Hopeychange?

Hey, Mr. President, maybe they didn’t teach this to you at your fancy Ivy League schools, or your ACORN community organizer training class, but it’s called leadership.  It’s called being out front.

Right now, you are more like the French elitist who says “I must find out where my people are going, so I can lead them.”