Roger Cohen: The Real Threat to America

[Bluebear]

The full-body scanners and intrusive pat-downs that are fast becoming the norm at U.S. airports — just in time for Thanksgiving! — do at least provide the answer to what should be done with Osama bin Laden if he’s ever captured: Rotate him in perpetuity through this security hell, “groin checks” and all. He’ll crumple fast and wonder that 19 young guys in four planes could so warp the nervous system of the world’s most powerful nation that it has empowered zealous bureaucrats to trample on the liberties for which Americans give thanks this week....

America is a nation of openness, boldness and risk-taking. Close this nation, cow it, constrict it and you unravel its magic.

There are now about 400 full-body scanners, set to grow to 1,000 next year. One of the people pushing them most energetically is Michael Chertoff, the former Secretary of Homeland Security.

He’s the co-founder and managing principal of the Chertoff Group, which provides security advice. One of its clients is California-based Rapiscan Systems, part of the OSI Systems corporation, that makes many of the “whole body” scanners being installed...Rapiscan and its adviser the Chertoff Group will certainly profit from the deployment underway (some of the machines were bought with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act). Americans as a whole will not. Rapiscan: Say the name slowly. It conjures up a sinister science fiction. When a government has a right to invade the bodies of its citizens, security has trumped freedom.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/opinion/26iht-edcohen.html?src=twrhp

[msongs]

1. oh I thought he would say the US Military with its rapacious bloated budget and wars nt

[glitch]

4. I thought it was going to be about the people who crashed our economy.

Perhaps he should have added the TSA idiocy to an "all of the above" series of columns.

[sabrina 1]

2. Good article, we really do get the government we deserve, being that

people are not willing to fight when there is a chance of doing something.

[xchrom]

3. chertoff -- that skeletor looking motherfucker. nt