Oh, in case someone tells you the new TSA procedures are necessary because of the Xmas bomber...

[KansDem]

Show them this:

The awareness of US intelligence

On November 11, British intelligence officials sent the U.S. a cable indicating that a man named "Umar Farouk" had spoken to al-Awlaki, pledging to support jihad, but the cable did not reflect Abdulmutallab's last name.<61> Abdulmutallab's father made a report to two CIA officers at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, on November 19 regarding his son's "extreme religious views",<4><62> and told the embassy that Abdulmutallab might be in Yemen.<6><19><33><63> Acting on the report, the suspect's name was added in November 2009 to the U.S..'s 550,000-name Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, a database of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. It was not added, however, to the FBI's 400,000-name Terrorist Screening Database, the terror watch list that feeds both the 14,000-name Secondary Screening Selectee list and the U.S.'s 4,000-name No Fly List,<64> nor was his U.S. visa revoked.<19>

U.S. State Department officials said in Congressional testimony that the State Department had wanted to revoke Abdulmutallab's visa, but U.S. intelligence officials requested that his visa not be revoked. The intelligence officials' stated reason was that revoking Abdulmutallab's visa could have foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida.<65>

Abdulmutallab's name had come to the attention of intelligence officials many months before that,<66> but no "derogatory information" was recorded about him.<41> A Congressional official said that Abdulmutallab's name appeared in U.S. reports reflecting that he had connections to both al-Qaeda and Yemen.<67> The NCTC did not check to see whether Abdulmutallab's American visa was valid, or whether he had a British visa that was valid; therefore, they did not learn that the British had rejected Abdulmutallab's visa application earlier in 2009.<9> The British did not inform the Americans because the visa application was denied to prevent immigration fraud and not for a national security purpose.<9>

On Christmas Day 2009, Abdulmutallab traveled to Amsterdam, where he boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 en route to Detroit. He had purchased his ticket with cash in Ghana on December 16.<114> Prior to boarding the plane eyewitnesses Kurt Haskell and Lori Haskell testified live on CNN that they witnessed a "smartly dressed Indian man" helping Abdulmutallab onto the plane.<115><116> They also testify that the ticket agent refused to allow Abdulmutallab on the plane because he did not have his own passport. <117>

New restrictions were imposed on U.S travelers, but the government was vague about many of them because it "wanted the security experience to be 'unpredictable'".<131> One day after she said that the system had "worked", Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano acknowledged that the aviation security system had indeed failed.<132>

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

It looks like the fuck-ups came from the top. So fix your fucking "aviation security system", and stop molesting the passengers! :grr:

[LisaL]

1. If it were necessary because of underwear bomber, why didn't

enhanced pat downs start right after underwear bomber?

[KansDem]

2. Another baffling response to an attack that occurred almost a year ago.

Why not, indeed?

[rug]

8. They were waiting for Pistole's confirmation.

[sabrina 1]

30. I think they were waiting for Napolitano to use money from the

Stimulus package to pay for them.

11 airports get new body scanners

The U.S. government is using $25 million in stimulus money to buy and install 150 full-body scanners in airports this year, to ramp up security and create jobs.

"By accelerating the deployment of this technology, we are enhancing our capability to detect and disrupt threats of terrorism across the nation," said DHS secretary Janet Napolitano in a press release on Friday. "These 11 airports will be the first of many to receive this enhanced technology as a result of the Recovery Act."

The scanners are manufactured by Rapiscan, a subsidiary of Hawthorn, Calif.-based OSI (OSIS). They cost from $150,000 to $180,000 each.

Rapiscan's CEO is a friend of the President and was invited by the President to accompany him on his trip to India. No conflict of interest there, I'm sure.

It's all about Corporate America. If they cared about our security, those scanners would be donated by corporate 'patriots'.

[sabrina 1]

31. I think they were waiting for Napolitano to use money from the

Stimulus package to pay for them.

11 airports get new body scanners

The U.S. government is using $25 million in stimulus money to buy and install 150 full-body scanners in airports this year, to ramp up security and create jobs.

"By accelerating the deployment of this technology, we are enhancing our capability to detect and disrupt threats of terrorism across the nation," said DHS secretary Janet Napolitano in a press release on Friday. "These 11 airports will be the first of many to receive this enhanced technology as a result of the Recovery Act."

The scanners are manufactured by Rapiscan, a subsidiary of Hawthorn, Calif.-based OSI (OSIS). They cost from $150,000 to $180,000 each.

Rapiscan's CEO is a friend of the President and was invited by the President to accompany him on his trip to India. No conflict of interest there, I'm sure.

It's all about Corporate America. If they cared about our security, those scanners would be donated by corporate 'patriots'.

[The_Casual_Observer]

11. Because it isn't Christmas yet.

And I'm not kidding.

[LisaL]

12. Aha! I think you are onto something.

Because the underwear bomber tried to strike on Christmas maybe TSA thinks that underwear bombers only strike on Christmas?

[The_Casual_Observer]

13. The thought has crossed my mind a few times in the last couple of days.

[Bill O Rights]

16. GOOGLE KURT HASKELL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2f_uSM5VXQ&NR=1

Haskell was an eyewitness and a passenger on flight 253. Haskell tells us that the Underwear Bomber was escorted onto the plane by a Handler perhaps Covert Op agent and was allowed to board the plane without a passport.

One of the prime reasons that they are doing what they are at the airport is because Michael Chertoff is making MILLIONS off of the scanners.

We need to start calling the scanners the Chertoff-Porno-and Child-Pornography-Scanners and the Groin Check Sexual Molestation Assault, the Chertoff-Punative-Sexual-Assault, because despite their statements aka LIES to the contrary, they are using the SEXUAL ASSAULT to herd people into the scanners.

THIS MUST NOT STAND!!! The Government is creating pornographic images of children and sexually assaulting everyone who goes through the pat-down including children.

[truth2power]

17. The underwear bomber event STINKS to high-heaven...

Government op.

[Poboy]

23. Good info Bill O Rights.

[Bill O Rights]

25. You are welcome

I want to reach out and speak directly to everyone who reads this. We need to find ways to work with ALL fellow Americans to defend THE ENTIRE BILL OF RIGHTS! I support the notion that we owe each other more allegience than we do to the people in DC. None of them have proven themselves trustworthy.

[Poboy]

28. I agree fully!

Are you aware of this project?

http://www.mybillofrights.org/live/

[sally cat]

3. Did someone actually say it was because of the Christmas underpants bomber?

[KansDem]

5. Here...

Google search

Take your pick...

[rug]

6. The President. Sunday.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/11/obama-holds-nato-news-conference/1

[DCKit]

4. Those who would profit from increased security NEED the occasional "event"...

to keep us terrafied.

[CrawlingChaos]

7. Not merely a "fuck up"

When you have a person in authority intervening to make sure Abdulmatallab made it on to the plane, I'd say something much fishier is going on.

[KansDem]

9. You and me both, CrawlingChaos...

He paid cash (always suspicious--I wonder if it was a one-way ticket)
He didn't have a passport (how did he ever get through security?)
His father ratted him out before his flight (what about that report?)
His name was added to one list but not another (why?)
Intel "officials" intervened to stop investigation (big why--was it more important to proceed with investigation of al Qaeda?)

A lot of fishiness...

[JohnyCanuck]

14. It's a bit uncanny how these fuckups come along just when needed

to suit certain agendas. E.g.this particular fuckup boosts "Skeletor" Chertoff onto the nightly news shows where he loudly proclaims how this type of terrorist attack is exactly the type of thing he "predicted" was likely to happen and which his client's x-ray machines were just what was needed to prevent their re-occurrence. Except of course, as already pointed out, someone helped undie bomber slip around the existing security procedures in Amsterdam anyway, even though from his appearance and behavior he could as well have been carrying a placard on a stick, "Look at me; I am a terrorist."

Then of course there were the anthrax letter attacks on US politicians and media figures which conveniently came along to help keep the "lets go to war and bomb their terrorist asses" fever against Arabs and Muslims revved up to fever pitch. As I remember it, there was some speculation going on that these anthrax letters contained anthrax from none other than evil-dictator™ Saddam's store of deadly WMDs. That was long before it turned out to be from a highly secure US military lab of course.

Last week, I excerpted several of the Saddam-anthrax reports from ABC and Ross -- here and here -- but there are others. ABC aggressively promoted as its top story for days on end during that highly provocative period of time that -- and these are all quotes:

(a) "the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite";

(b) bentonite is "a troubling chemical additive that authorities consider their first significant clue yet";

(c) "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons";

(d) bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program"; and,

(e) "the anthrax found in a letter to Senator Daschle is nearly identical to samples they recovered in Iraq in 1994" and "the anthrax spores found in the letter to Senator Daschle are almost identical in appearance to those they recovered in Iraq in 1994 when viewed under an electron microscope."

At different times, Ross attributed these claims to "three well-placed but separate sources" and, alternatively, to "at least four well-placed sources."

All of those factual claims -- each and every one of them, separately -- were completely false, demonstrably and unquestionably so. There is now no question about that. Yet neither ABC nor Ross have ever retracted, corrected, clarified, or explained these fraudulent reports -- reports which, as documented below, had an extremely serious impact on the views formed by Americans in those early, critical days about the relationship between the 9/11 attacks, the anthrax attacks and Iraq.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2007/04/09/abc_anthrax/

And of course there is that grand-daddy of all fuckups, 9/11 itself for which no one has been disciplined or fired even thought there were plenty of warnings flooding in from various corners of the world that a big terrorist attack was coming. Nevertheless the US military and intelligence agencies were still caught flat footed to the extent that the most powerful military in the world couldn't even defend it's own headquarters from being hit by a hijacked plane an hour after after the first planes were known to have been hijacked and 34 minutes after the 2nd WTC tower had been hit.

Yup fuckups all around. Now read my sig line.

[Poboy]

29. kick

[felix_numinous]

10. K&R

This stinks-and now we all have to suffer for someone the State Department let into the country??? :mad:

[customerserviceguy]

15. I surely hope the underwear bomber

has a "friendly" cellmate. And I hope that ugly bastard shoe bomber, Richard Reid, has daily encounters with fists that make him even uglier.

Is it cruel and unusual punishment to boil them alive in pig fat, just for deterrent purposes?

[TexasObserver]

18. Here is the "tell": they started the pat downs to force use of the machines.

If they had wanted to use the pat downs because they were needed, this would have started almost a year ago. It was created as a herding device, to force passengers to "choose" the less intrusive choice - the machine.

This is about selling machines first, and shaping compliant citizens second.

[somone]

19. Yep. The timing was a dead giveaway

They also had to wait a while to get a certain number of machines built and deployed throughout the country.

[TorchTheWitch]

20. I always thought that guy was a plant

especially when the issue about his passport came out. Now we know why.

[KansDem]

21. I think his not having a passport speaks volumes.

And it has never been explained, as far as I know.

[Bill O Rights]

22. Not only not explained but consistently censored

If this information was repeated enough so that a significant percentage of the American people knew about this issue, the TSA Porno-Scans and Genital Search Sexual Assault would end today.

[Poboy]

24. I agree. It is a false narrative built upon FICTION.

[Gabi Hayes]

26. poboy, thanks fo seder link! Taibbi is on! now I have something to make me

madder than I already am

maybe some yoks along the way

[Poboy]

27. You're welcome. Its a great show/podcast. -nt