Posted on 08/16/2006 12:15:31 PM PDT by rightalien
A little-known fact about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that the U.S. military requires soldiers to travel in uniform from theater. An even lesser known fact is that the Transportation Security Administration aggressively targets war veterans as they travel home to their loved ones.
At Baltimore's airport on my way back to Orlando from Iraq, there were about 50 soldiers in line, waiting to be cleared by TSA. I noticed soldiers taking off clothing, and then they assumed the position so commonly seen in police-chase videos, arms and legs spread wide as a screener passed a wand close to their bodies. Soldiers were asked to remove belts, boots and shirts, and their carry-on bags were ransacked.
(Excerpt) Read more at orlandosentinel.com ...
Typical anti military abuse handed out by government rent-a-cop agencies.
ping
How does the screener know whether the soldier is a real soldier? Is there a fail-safe method to ID men & women in uniform?
Unfortunately, this has been the case for decades. In 1983 I was returning to the US from active duty with my Naval Reserve unit. We were flying our own P-3 airplane. Upon our landing at NAS South Weymouth, we had to endure a dump-out-your-seabag on the hangar deck while a warrant officer crawled through everything, looking for drugs. He confiscated a bottle of cough syrup I'd had in my bag for a year, giving me grief for it. Here we were, US officers returning from active duty, and we were treated as drug dealers. It sucked then and it sucks now.
Do the idiots strip-search the flight crew as well?
I wonder how TSA would react if all 50 of the soldiers just said "that's enough" and walked through en masse.
Truly a sad commentary on Americana culture and the TSA.
The soldiers should be frisking the bureaucrats, not the other way around.
Maybe, maybe not. I can't get into the full article, but I was thinking of some of the reported incidents of stolen uniforms in Iraq...granted, these were Iraqi military or police uniforms, but maybe the screeners have been advised to look for terrorists posing as soldiers.
That said, I will agree that the "screening" being done is ridiculous.
What security screening do the TSA screeners go through? Crickets....
However, I recall a Muslim US soldier killing his fellow officers in Kuwait, and hundreds of terrorist dressing as Iraqi Army regulars and going on killing sprees.
I guess they got tired of patting down grey haired ladies.
Name, rank and serial number?
I could be ok with this as long as TSA employees get a cavity search when they fly.
No, their union would strike.
Sgt. Akbar
The military murderer who the press forgets about.
Such crap we have to endure.
Happened to me too. However, that WO wasn't just looking for drugs, he was also acting as a Customs Agent looking for contraband.
Exactly.
Last year, a solder put an inert training grenade in his luggage. How is a relatively untrained baggage handler or security worker supposed to know that it's a dummy grenade?
Back in 1991, A LOT of soldiers were caught with contraband, including unexploded cluster munitions and other weapons.
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