http://www.sftt.org/article12092002b.html

I can understand how hard it is to find all this stuff when your performance evaluations are based on shoe removal, luggage pillaging, wanding, and ID checking.

Or when we allow pretty much anyone to drive uninspected trucks onto the tarmac!

Say, here's an idea, why not look into the reasons someone is so desperate to blow themselves up as a poilitical statement?

Hmmm?

Notice that these items are NOT in someone's shoes???

Wow -- all that found in his shoes?

Check out the IED powerpoint presentation
http://www.sftt.org/index2.html

To state the obvious: a metal detector would catch these weapons. Presumably the new explosives sniffer machine would detect these. I am happy to walk through these machines in an organized fashion; I would even be willing to walk through such machines at train stations, subways, etc.

But the efforts being concentrated on shoes and on ID checks are largely wasted. I want the TSA or its successor agency to look at behavior and for combustible materials, not for nail clippers.

At the WTMD, yes, ticket counters and curbsides, no

I would not be happy to walk through these machines at train stations and subways simply because it would make no sense to do so.Every rail system - local subway or cross country train - is vulnerable between stations and stops. A small bomb inside the cars makes no sense at all when a similat bomb under the unprotectable miles of tracks would do more damage due to derailment.

I think a lot of you miss the point behind tsadude's link to the powerpoint presentation on IEDs. The bad guys are quite creative in finding ways to disguise improvised explosive devices, and a bunch of you are still complaining about having to take off your shoes. While Richard Reid's shoe-bomb was very crude, it nonetheless was actually attempted. Credit the bad guys for conducting their versions of after-action reviews, summing up lessons-learned and coming up with better ways to improve IED attacks. The choice is simple: putting up with the inconvenience of having to remove your shoes or surviving the consequences of underestimating the bad guys.

And what will be the response if one of the "bad guys" not-so-creatively puts a bomb in their underwear or their butt?

I will never willingly tolerate the stupid, useless, un-American "inconvenience" of having to remove my shoes because it prevents nothing. And I hope that those who continue to espouse this idiocy are fired with prejudice for supporting this ineffective solution when other effective, non-invasive solutions are available.

I have had some stink bombs come out of my butt

That is idiotic.

If the "Bad Guy's" have graduated beyond shoes, why the shoe carnival??????

If there are many more hiding places for a bomb than shoes, why the shoe carnival??????

The TSA is run by morons. From Rear Moron Loy all the way down to Checkpoint Supervisors. Morons. The ONLY reason flying is safer today than 9/10/2001 is due to the fact that Passengers and Crew will NEVER cooperate with terrorists again. PERIOD.

Closing the barn door after the horse has gone.

I would just looooooove to know how many bad guys have been stopped.

I don't mean those fools who have always brought their guns on board ... pre 9/11 planes were full of guns and we all know that some still make it through. I don't mean people with scissors, forgotten sharp things. I don't mean the harmless fuzzy ones.

I wonder how many dedicated, mobbed up with a serious "we're gonna take this airplane" terrorists have been stopped at the screening stations?

Reid was stopped by pax and FA's. The fellow who crossed with bomb materials in his car from Vancouver doesn't go to the TSA trophy book.

OF ALL THE PICTURES IN THE POWERPOINT PRESENTATION, NOT ONE WAS OF A CATCH BY THE TSA?

So, in how many millions of searches costing how many millions of dollars have we caught real "bad guys?"

Never say never.