Your replies to Spiff and GUWonder indicate that you fail to comprehend their posts.

C-4 or Semtex in a toothpaste tube or small peanut butter jar or shaped in typical modeling clay shapes (in the absence of other IED components) will not be identifiable to any x-ray operator as an obvious plastic explosive. It will appear as a dense object.

I don't want you to lose your job, so don't bother trying to explain to me how the plastic explosive in these examples looks different than any other dense item on the screen.

FWIW, I'm pretty confident that what you experienced was some kind of special situation, perhaps even a threat of some kind. Which is not to say that there aren't sometimes armed military personnel from host countries near the EL AL counter.

EL AL security agents who do pax screening are not active members of the Israeli military (I'm not saying an active member has never worked as an agent, who knows; but it's not the military who does the screening), and I'll bet you'll have a nearly impossible time locating anyone else who can point to a time that they've seen an actual EL AL security agent, doing screening, with an UZI.

(My response is just intended as an FWIW/FYI, not to argue with you - I quite believe that you saw what you saw. I'm just saying it's not typical, nor standard.)

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there's a shoe carnival thread that recently noted that ORD is now a carnival, and my own experience last week confirmed it. You are now told going in that if you've got thick soles you'll have to remove your shoes. (T3/AA in my own experience)

No!!! Not T3!

Saturday at SFO I got the whole random search procedure--the air-blower machine, complete wipedown of the inside of my luggage (I was using carryon)looking for explosive powder, check of all electronics, etc. And I'm a 74-year old 5'1" grandmother. Don't they have any common sense? I should have known. At JFK my 99-year old mother in a wheelchair had to remove her shoes and get patted down.

Actually, all you'll see is a dense object. If someone puts explosives in their luggage the x-ray will not tell you the operator that there are explosives in the luggage.

This focus on shoes is just plain stupid. And I'm not talking run of the mill, fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down stupid. I'm talking about stupid to the point where someone has drawn a circle for the person in charge of harassment at the TSA and this jackass keeps insisting it's a square. I'm talking about a person so stupid it's a miracle they make it out of the house without assistance by at least three other people.

I can smuggle explosives past the so-called security at the airport at will. That's right, any time I or anyone else wants C-4 or any other non-metalic explosive (and most are non-metallic) airside, they can do so. Why? Because your agency is so incredibly stupid thinking that shoes are the only place that passengers could ever hide explosives that they fail to realize or care that plastic explosives are malleable. A volume of explosive that will take down a plane and more will easily fit in a person's undergarments or in their body cavities. These explosives will also fit and go unnoticed in carryon baggage unless someone puts wires and a blasting cap there too.

Don't believe me? Your x-ray tests are done so that your employees will pass them and Congress won't send your agency back to the streets where most of your employees belong. If someone takes some PETN and molds it carefully, the operator of the x-ray won't give it a second look. It's just another one of thousands of dense looking objects that bored x-ray people see every day. MAYBE if someone shaped it into one of those cute bomb looking devices on that ridiculous sign at the checkpoint and stuck some wires and a clock around it, a screener might notice it, but even that is a real reach.

Congratulations on knowing what a shoe looks like under the x-ray. Guess what? The explosives aren't there.

Welcome to Flyertalk.

As has been posted before, the minute the TSA stops treating you and your mom as potential (or suspected) terrorists, the bad guys will somehow morph into 74 year old grandmothers and 99 year old great-grandmothers. Or at least they will recruit people like you to do their bidding.

You need to learn not to hold it in. You have to express yourself and really let it all out. Bottling up your emotions will just stress you out.

One minor picky point: your assertion about shoes would hold water if shoes were the only items passed through the x-ray. However, if you'll take a moment to notice, you will observe that everything goes through the x-ray with very few exceptions, and those exceptions are screened by an alternative method such as ETD sampling.

Of course, I was wondering how long it would take to bring up the ol' body cavity theory. Talk about degenerating down to potty humor. "What's that smell?" "Someone blew some sh*t up."

5 to 19 people chewing "bubble gum" and there would be no need for "potty humor".

Before al-Qaeda recruits 74 year old grandmothers as shoe bombers, they will find 25 year old martyrs to smuggle butt bombs onto planes. Not trying to be too scatalogical, but al-Qaeda has been an extremely secretive group, unwilling to trust outsiders to carry out sensitive missions.

You might want to read this.
Sep 13, 4:47 AM EDT
Colombia Questions Its Airline Security
By DAN MOLINSKI
Associated Press Writer




BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Colombia questioned its own airline security measures and ordered an immediate review after a father in a wheelchair dodged a checkpoint and smuggled grenades onto a plane.

The father and his son surrendered five hours after commandeering the Aires airliner around midday Monday after it departed from the southern city of Florencia on a flight headed to Colombia's capital, Bogota.

The plane, with at least 24 people aboard, including an American, landed in Bogota after the hijackers made a radio call to air traffic control indicating they had taken control, said Gen. Edgar Lesmez, chief of the Colombian Air Force.

The hijackers allowed government negotiators and a Roman Catholic priest to board while the twin-propeller plane sat on the tarmac. All passengers and crew were eventually freed unharmed before the hijackers, 42-year-old Porfirio Ramirez and his 22-year-old son, Linsen Ramirez, gave up and were arrested.

The older Ramirez boarded the plane in a wheelchair that was too large to pass through an airport metal detector, and he was not patted down by security agents, Luis Octavio Rojas, director of the Florencia airport, told The Associated Press.

A statement late Monday from President Alvaro Uribe's office said the Civil Aviation authority must find out "what allowed someone to take advantage of his disabled condition to pass through the security checks ... with grenades."

Rojas acknowledged his airport security agents only gave the elder Ramirez "a visual inspection."
Uribe's office said: "Remember that nobody is exempt or excluded from security controls at airports."
According to the government statement, the elder hijacker said he hijacked the plane to bring attention to a case in which he was partially paralyzed by a police bullet during a raid on his house some 14 years ago and had unsuccessfully sought government compensation.

Sen. Carlos Moreno, who helped negotiate the standoff, said a $43,000 check was handed to the hijackers as part of a "deal" between the government and the hijackers, but the government would not honor it.

No concessions were ever made to the hijackers, the government said.
Attorney General Mario Iguaran said the elder Ramirez led the hijacking and if convicted faces 25 to 40 years in prison for aggravated hijacking of an aircraft. He expressed sympathy for the man's case, but added: "Unfortunately he has to be brought to justice."

The elder Ramirez, speaking to reporters before being transferred to a jail cell, said he has "no reason to regret" his actions Monday and said that during the negotiation the government "said they would help me" and that they "would give me an indemnity, because that's what I need."

The government said Monday it plans to review his request for compensation, but said this would not affect the severe charges he faces.

A U.S. citizen was among the passengers on the hijacked flight, said a U.S. official in Bogota, who spoke on condition of anonymity. No other details were available on the American

Regarding the "extremely secretive" aspect:

That is actually not entirely true ... at least it was not until more recently. Even in the case of 9/11, it was Mohammed Atta who was the least willing to trust "outsiders" or even "insiders" to do much or know much. KSM, on the other hand, had talked about "his plan" to even his second cousins' in-law's nephew and the corner grocery store guy whom he new years before in Kuwait but had not met for several years. OBL had talked to his daughter-in-law about "the idea" in the presence of an Arab former US intelligence asset around the spring of 2001. Even some American idiots shook OBL's hands -- with OBL's knowledge that they were American -- in the months and years between when OBL became wanted by our government and when 9/11 happened.

Grandmothers are used, wittingly and unwittingly, as mules for drugs and drug money often enough. Why not for bomb components suddenly handed over at an airside drop-off/hand-off?

Actually, they're not so much concerned with metal in your shoes as other type of plastik explosives, and non-metal material. To avoid the hassle now, I just take my shoes off - regardless of the type. It's a pain, but letting TSA raise my blood pressure over it is just not worth it. TSA and the security farce has us FF by the short hairs and there's really nothing we can do about it! Complain yes, and goody, we get to go through personal screening!

redjr...

Whenever I return to the US for my first domestic flight, the following thoughts now come to mind: This idiotic shoe obsession?!?!? Again?!?!? Only in America.

C'mon Bart! We're not in the Army anymore. Kick in with the vernacular. 'kay?