Posted on 12/15/2004 2:49:39 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Homeland "security" is quickly becoming a sick and dangerous joke...and not just because of those pretty-colored security warnings the feds trot out every holiday weekend. Some examples...
Tom Quinn heads up the Federal Air Marshal Service under the Department of Homeland Security. The air marshals he commands are supposed to secretly ride on passenger airplanes unnoticed and be ready to thwart any potential future hijackings. The key word here being "unnoticed."
Alas, Quinn has mandated a dress code for air marshals which, as T.J. Bonner of the Border Patrol describes it, "makes them stick out like a sore thumb." Nevertheless, agents have reportedly been told, "You wear a sports coat, or you wear a suit coat, or you look for another job."
Even if that means "blending in" with passengers decked out in Jimmy Buffet shirts and Panama hats on a plane bound for Miami in July?
The fact is, few passengers travel in business clothes any longer...which is why air marshals attired in their Sunday-go-to-meetin' suits are easily picked out in the airport crowd. Quinn's dress code is, for want of a more accurate word...stupid.
This issue first came up last spring, forcing Quinn to assure a Senate committee he would make concealing the marshals' identities "his number one priority." Yet over the Thanksgiving holiday, he made a surprise visit to Reagan National Airport in DC and reportedly grew considerably angry upon discovering, as the Washington Times reports, that "29 or 30 deplaning air marshals were dressed in varying states of compliancewith the conspicuous marshal dress code."
Doggone it! They looked just like...um, regular passengers. I'll have somebody's head for this!
Good grief. If Osama is indeed sitting in a cave somewhere having a good chuckle at our expense, it's not without cause.
We have airport screeners who can fondle buxom blonds, strip-search grannies-in-pearls and give tykes-in-diapers a "full wanding"...but who aren't allowed to "profile" for additional scrutiny Middle-Eastern young men from Muslim countries.
We have a Transportation Secretary who trusts former military pilots to fly multi-ton aircraft loaded with passengers and jet fuel...but not to arm themselves with handguns in the cockpit to repel any future hijacking attempts.
We have a Congress which just passed an Intelligence reform bill to shore up our domestic defense against terror...but which refused to include a crackdown on immigration loopholes which allowed the terrorists who flew those planes into the World Trade Center towers to get U.S. driver's licenses.
And now we have a highly-qualified nominee to replace Tom Ridge as head of the Department of Homeland Security reportedly waylaid because of...a nanny problem? Where in the heck are our security priorities folks?
If this kind of politically correct crud continues to take precedence over our national security, the public could very quickly turn on the Bush administration, dooming any chance for a meaningful second term. Somebody at the White House and/or on Capitol Hill had better get its politically correct act together. Fast.
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Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a non-profit public policy advocacy organization in Washington, D.C. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Citizen Outreach. He may be reached at chuck@citizenoutreach.com
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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.
Homeland insecurity PING!
Could this possibly be disinformation?
Well, as far as I know, Chuck Muth is neither a radical Muslim nor a former administration official with an ax to grind, if that's what you're worried about.
I woundn't count on this being disinformation. I have heard about the nutty airport screening procedures and the bureaucratic reluctance to arm pilots before.
I used to work in an airport for a government agency. This was right before 911. At the time, you could have taken over the airport with 6 well trained men.
Now it might take 7.
I wish it were. I spotted one on a flight. It was confirmed
(IMHO) since he was 1st on, last off,dressed the part, and
was reading stuff about IDPA shooting.
yeah, I know, I may be profiling, but I'm usually right.
Until Tom Quinn is fired, if you travel by air, do the
air marshalls a favor. Dress and act like one. Keep the
perps guessing.
This what comes of career bureaucrats running huge departments. These are things we "ordinary" folks can see plain as day, but we are left completely out of the loop. If this continues, we're going to wake up one morning and see an entire US city vaporized. And if that happens, every one of these departments will be go into hyperdrive to cover their own butts and avoid blame.
Now it might take 7.
That's so sad.
And Stupid. It's so frustrating to see some people passing by airport security while I am being screened, while I and the screener, know they really should be looking at 'them'
How many have to die before stupid people get it?
You know whats wrong? There is no common sense.
It has become politically incorrect to state the obvious.
Lord, save us. IJNIP.
My brother in law is a pilot for a major airline. He is always notified of everybody on board who is armed. There is more than 1 air marshall on the flight. One you can see and the one's you don't. The info you get and the public positions you see being taken are EXACTLY the positions they want everybody to see. There is way more being done than anybody is going to give a speech about. If they did tell all, just to make you feel better, everybody on this board would be screaming " Don't tell them all our secrets"
Do you want everybody to know everything we are doing???
Jeeeeeeez.
"We have airport screeners who can fondle buxom blonds, strip-search grannies-in-pearls and give tykes-in-diapers a "full wanding"...but who aren't allowed to "profile" for additional scrutiny Middle-Eastern young men from Muslim countries."
====
Yes, but the government has achieved its *highest priority,* NOT OFFENDING MUSLIMS!
Allahu Akhbar!!!
We're here to kill you and we won't even let you offend us!
You Infidels make it so easy for us!
[Sarcasm=off]
There are over 2000 domestic flights in the US daily.
For a single air marshal per flight that would require (considering that air marshalls don't work 24 hours a day and you can't always get directly from one flight to another) around twenty thousand air marshals.
And it's just as easy to hijack a plane outbound for a foreign country as it is a domestic flight.
When you add in overseas flights, the number goes up to 5000 per day, and the number of air marshals needed goes up to around fifty thousand.
If you consider an average salary of $50,000, that's 2.5 billion dollars just in salary, not to mention pension, medical, training, administrative overhead, supervision, transport and many other financial costs. The rough estimate for government is that each person on the payroll costs three times as much as his salary. That makes a conservative estimate of 7.5 billion.
To have your scenario of two on each flight, double all of those numbers with a grand total of 15 billion.
The total budget for the US Dept. of Homeland Security is only 40 billion. That means that two air marshals on each flight would take up over a third of the entire DHS budget. I don't think so.
It's not possible to have even a single air marshal on every flight, much less two.
The reality is that about 5% of all domestic flights carry an air marshal.
Speaking of "Homeland Security", I'll bet a lot less than that carry an armed pilot - and this is over three years after 9/11.
In WWII and with this time frame, we would be at the Rhine in the heart of Germany!
bump for later
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