Monday, November 22, 2010

From Which Threats Have We Been Saved?

Sometimes, one just has to wonder,

How many times in the last ten years has an plane been taken down due to a bomb?
How many times in the last ten years has a plane been taken down due to lightning?
How many times in the last ten years has a bridge been taken out due to a bomb?
How many times in the last ten years has a bridge collapsed due to disrepair?
How many terrorists have been captured by the TSA?
How many terrorists in the last ten years have been Muslim?
How many terrorists have been married, white Anglo Saxons flying with their children?
How many terrorists have been white males using their young children to carry suicide bombs?
How many terrorists have been Muslims using their young children to carry suicide bombs?
How many times has the TSA singled out every likely possibility by using common intelligence, such as pattern recognition, to identify the most likely threats to air safety?
How many times has a parent warned the authorities that their son is a terrorist and is likely to carry out an act of jihad, only to have had the authorities ignore the warning, resulting in that same son wearing explosives in his underwear aboard a US flight to Detroit?
How many terrorists will use the types of bombs that they know are being sought in the airport screenings?
How many bombs, carried internally like those that the terrorist are using now, can be detected by the current screening methods?
How many times has the TSA guaranteed that after their intense level of screening, the aircraft will suffer no damage and that all the passengers will arrive safely at their destinations?
What is the ratio of naturally occurring air disasters to deliberate human caused air disasters?
What is the ratio of Muslim caused air disasters to non-Muslim caused air disasters?
What is the ratio of "most probable" screened to "least probable"?
What is the cost of screening those least likely to be terrorists?
How many for the "least likely" have turned out to be bone fide terrorists?
Are the TSA style of screenings, though markedly different from the highly successful Israeli style screenings, for the safety of the public at the expense of their dignity and rights, or more so to make the TSA feel and look better to themselves when they look into the mirror and the TV camera?
When the TSA says that certain measures are necessary for the safety of the public do they mean that they are categorically necessary or that its the only way that they can feel assured?
Is the TSA brighter and better than other countries that have fewer attacks while using less invasive measures, or is the TSA limited by imagination and lack of respect for Americans that they can find no better, even if others have shown that better exists?

These are just a few of the questions that loom to the fore when trying to understand how an American is asked by another American who has sworn to uphold the Constitution to, in fact, abandon that same Constitution.

If you have any questions that you can't explain away as easily as Ms. Napolitano can, please, feel free to leave them here. Surely, there are many more.

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