TSA screening and pat downs...

The fools who claim it's the norm in Europe are right, at least as far as twenty years ago. That was when I was stationed in Italy and witnessed first hand what measures were taken there.

Profiling? Don't even bother complaining, it was a fact of life. The word that was put out via the military grapevine said that anyone unlucky enough to enter Italy behind a Muslim was in for a very looonnnggg wait. They went over the followers of the Pedophile Prophet with a fine toothed comb.

Intrusive pat downs? They were the norm. Just try arguing with an unsmiling member of the Carabinieri over that. Those boys were thorough and had zippo sense of humor.

Living just across the large pond called the Mediterranean Sea kind of gave the folks there an entirely different mind set about security. I recall that when a Marine colonel was captured and hung by Islamists in Lebanon, the local Carabinieri sent armed patrols through local schools where American children attended. Needless to say, it scared the hell out of a lot of kids. They hadn't seen that in Kansas.

So do I think that in this post 9/11/01 world, after the Shoebomber, Christmas Jockey Short Jihadist and other fools caught before they acted out their 7th century fantasies that we should follow Europe? Actually I'm ambivalent about that one.

Our TSA agents aren't anywhere near as professional as those Italian national cops I saw. There are too many verifiable stories of this nature; http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/airport-staff-exposed-womans-breasts-laughed/story-e6freon6-1225955345734 that indicate just the opposite.

I've never personally had problems with the TSA, since I may never fly again I may never deal with incompetent TSA agents. Lucky me.

But if I DID fly I'd want to know that the group in charge of air travel security was at LEAST as competent as their Israeli counterparts. You know those boys are good, they have to be. When was the last time you heard of an EL AL plane being hijacked?

If I went through a body scanner I'd want detailed information about radiation exposure, complete assurance that any scans of my wife and daughter would be immediately destroyed and knowledge that everyone would be subjected to the same treatment. That includes followers of the Pedophile Prophet, especially since it's their coreligionists that make all of this necessary.

I'd also like to be free to carry a firearm onboard. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

Finally, at the same time I'm undergoing all of this scanning, poking and prodding, I'd like to rest secure in the knowledge that my government has at last stopped kissing Islamic ass and started going after all the creeps that necessitate this. As a nation we've been altering and tightening our flight security for decades solely because no one is willing to go root out the assholes that have done this since the '60's. Isn't it about time we REALLY got serious about protection of our freedoms and privacy? If that means we're the meanest kids on the block than so be it.

If all those conditions were in existence then I'd be first in line to defend the body scans and pat downs.

Let me know when it happens, I'm not waiting. Instead I believe this will continue to be a political football with all kinds of concessions made to Muslims, a unionizing of the TSA that will make firing incompetents impossible and a further acceptance in the erosion of our freedoms, security and rights.