Very well said, Bruce.

Unfortunately, the "price is no object" camp appears to have carried the day.

Even worse, some day in the future they will declare that this BS has "prevented another September 11" and that they are all heroes...wait...San Jose already declared Norm Mineta a hero, in part for his handling of the ground stop and the sharp and pointy ban.

Kind of hard to convince the sheople at that point that the TSA is wrongly claiming credit for the absence of hijackings and that many, many billions of dollars have been squandered.


"Patience {with ludicrous and nonsensical security procedures, completely inept federal bureaucrats and unprecedented intrusions into Americans' Constitutional Rights} is the newest form of Patriotism."

Agreed. The two posters above have it right. The TSA and its request for $6 billion are just the beginning. The difficulty will be weaning our country from this costly "security" mistake over the next decades.

The price for airport security tripled, essentially, (with minimal security improvement IMHO) when the airport security people were made federal employees. This will cost more than the State Department, and it will go on for years.

sbrower, you also missed the french flight which cost another 182 lives in 1989. It was basically the same device as used in Pan Am.
"The United Nations Security Council has passed 3 resolutions calling upon Libya to surrender for trial two men suspected of bombing Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 and French flight UTA 772 in 1989." or see
http://home.c2i.net/stein.sandvold/uta/

I do understand your feeling though, bombings have dropped off because of the result of Pam Am and the recognition of the threat. By profiling and doing selective scanning it has been possible to limit the belief in success. Actually the decision to attack terrorists and terrorist supporting states has helped but I still feel that the main reason we have seen so few actual bombings is that building a bomb that will blow up a plane in air is probably the most difficult bomb to make. There are too many variables and the bomb must be highly stable and robust enough to stand up to baggage handler abuse. This generally requires government level support for the best explosives and bomb making abilities.

Both though are extremely limited threats that will not be solved by this massive expenditure of money.

Doppy, I disagree that most of this is a one time equipment cost. First I think the majority of security experts agree that the devices now being purchased are not the best just the best available. What we are going to see is a massive expenditure for them and a consistent need to find better devices. The false positive rate is going to be terrible when you are trying to scan all 1 billion plus bags. This cost does not even include the constant service and training required. These are highly sophisticated devices that will have to be precisely maintained to be effective. This is not a hospital with relatively limited use which is the original purpose of these machines.

I also believe that your idea to pay for this by not using the military is the wrong attitude. The only way we will prevent major terrorist actions is by destroying the attackers. Even the most massive security expenditure will not prevent major terrorist action. The best it can do is change the terrorist target or the method he uses to attack his target. Either way he will attack until eliminated.



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Robert

As for those bomb detecting machines: ORD does not have enough space to install them if they had them. They don't have enough space to add more screening positions.
Since the feds tookover, the screeners pay has doubled nationally with the SAME screeners that the pols said were bad.

The above are excellent arguments all. Obviously as a conservative, I agree with some and disagree with others. One point that was started, however, I would like to supplement. Isn't it curious how we are willing to accept 42,000+ deaths a year on our roads, yet we are even more willing to accept spending $6B or more to allegedly prevent a few hundred deaths in a hijacking or bombing. The reason? Aircraft crashes are sensational front page news, yet people die on the highways every day. It never makes the national media, unless it's a big one.

Modern Americans, most of whom do not know, understand, appreciate, or respect the Constitution and the rights it guarantees them, have fallen into what Ben Franklin warned us about. "Those who would sacrifice liberty for safety, deserve neither." Or something like that.