Bullies at the Airport

http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=4079

If you traveled by air last week for the Thanksgiving holiday, you undoubtedly witnessed Transportation Security Administration agents conducting aggressive searches of some passengers. A new TSA policy begun in September calls for invasive and humiliating searches of random passengers; in some instances crude pat-downs have taken place in full public view. Some female travelers quite understandably have burst into tears upon being groped, and one can only imagine the lawsuits if TSA were a private company. But TSA is not private, TSA is a federal agency – and therefore totally unaccountable to the American people.

TSA was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Although the National Guard, DOD, FBI, CIA, NSA, and FAA utterly failed to protect American citizens on that tragic day, federal legislators immediately proposed creating yet another government agency. But the commercial flying community did not want airport security federalized, and my office was inundated with messages from airline pilots opposing the creation of TSA. One pilot stated, "I don't want the same people who bring me the IRS and ATF to be in charge of airport security." But Congress didn't listen to the men and women who spend their working lives flying, so it created another agency that costs billions of dollars, employs thousands of unionized federal workers, and produces poor results.

Thanks for posting this.

Pretend your doing something to protect air travelers. So by harassing and discouraging air travelers from ever flying again they have in a round about way succeeded

ran an article very sympathetic to the TSA screeners. Ironically they chose to publish a photo of a couple of suspected "terrorists" getting a pat down. These terrorists were the sweetest looking little four year old boy you could imagine along with his grandma. Yep. I feel soooo much better knowing that I'm being kept safe from wanton acts of terror by four year olds and their grandmothers! Last summer I was subjected to one of those humiliating pat-down searches when the metal detector went off thanks to surgical pins from an old ankle injury. I pointed to the scar, but the screener would have none of it. Insisted on a full-on bra examination in full view of other passengers. I complained loudly and was probably lucky not to have been arrested. Was amazed at the people simply putting up with this shit as though it's doing some good.

This whole groping and eradicating civil liberties in the name of "national security" is almost wholly unnecessary.

None of this was in place on Sept. 11th and they (Bush, Cheney, Rice) had all the information needed to deter and stop the hijackers, but insider reports from the FBI and CIA paint a picture of those agencies being given orders to deliberately stand down.

This whole twisted "searching grandmothers and children, groping women" push for "national security" is a bunch of utter garbage.

BTW, the aggressive groping of women reminds me very much of the abuse suffered by female inmates at Abu Ghraib.

Is that where we're headed next?