Our lives are in their hands.
After miserably bungling their mission to protect the flying public, the so-called security services are circling the wagons, issuing their "It's not our fault" proclamations.
The Dutch and America's Homeland Security Bozo-in-Chief Janet Napolitano say it's not their fault that their machines didn't pick up the explosives strapped to the would-be terrorist intent on blowing up Northwest 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day. It's not their fault that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab wasn't on their no-fly list.
Of course, their self-serving alibis evade the glaring reality that here was an individual who, no-fly list or not, undetectable explosives or not, screamed out for heightened scrutiny, for secondary examination, for at least a pat-down, by profile alone.
- Young, single African
- Traveling on a one-way ticket
- With no checked baggage
- From a region of Muslim militants
- From a country of rampant corruption
Proper work would have quickly revealed Abdulmutallab's presence in a terrorist suspect database (TIDE).
The facts that Abdulmutallab was not on a no-fly list and that he passed through metal detectors are irrelevant. This man should have been stopped!
But he was not stopped, and it is only luck and the quick reactions of passengers that averted disaster.
And now, for the gross incompetence of Janet Napolitano's crew, Dutch security at Schiphol, Nigerian security at Lagos and the gross incompetence of the State Department for ignoring the desperate warnings of the terrorist's father, we get alibis and excuses and, to add insult to injury, airline passengers will be subjected to additional, more onerous measures which, though utterly useless in their effect, are aimed at making the incompetents look like they are doing something.
Islamic radicals would be comical were they not homicidal. The spectacle of Napolitano and her colleagues covering their collective asses would also be comical were it not for the fact that, alas, our lives are in their hands.
