TSA idiocy vs. armed soldiers
Posted by Richard on November 21, 2010
They were returning from Afghanistan on a military charter flight — 330 soldiers coming home from war. All were armed with M4 carbines. Some also had sidearms. And some had M240B machine guns. The flight stopped in Indianapolis to drop off about 100 members of the Indiana National Guard. But for some reason, all 330 soldiers were made to disembark. With their weapons (unloaded, of course).
TSA personnel decided that, before the 230 who were continuing on could reboard the plane, they'd have to submit to security screening. Hilarious idiocy ensued. Read the whole thing. You won't know whether to laugh, cry, or just be disgusted.
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Rick Shultz said
I am really skeptical about this one. Yeah I know that it sounds exactly like something these “you want fries with that?” idiots would do, and I grant that something like this is hard to make up, but as hot as this issue is right now if it really happened then why isn’t the news media ALL OVER IT?
FOX, at the very least, would be unable to resist this even if they couldn’t confirm it…:=) and I’ve heard absolutely nothing even though I’ve been watching nothing but news all day long. Not saying
it didn’t happen but I’m gonna have to see this on some news channel before I can give it any credence.
rgcombs said
I understand your skepticism. But Eric Erickson seems like a pretty reliable person, and he vouched for the soldier who wrote him about it, who’s a friend of his.
I don’t think lack of media coverage casts doubt on the story. Consider the situation. These people were returning home from war after who knows how long. At the end of their flight, their families were waiting to greet them. How many of them, do you think, would tell their wives and children, or parents and siblings, “I’ll be with you in a bit. First I have to call a news outlet and try to convince them to come down here and report the story of the security screening we got in Indianapolis.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if the number who contacted a media outlet was zero. If someone did, it might have been reported locally. But Erickson didn’t reveal the final destination of the flight, so we don’t know where to look.
If it was reported locally, it wouldn’t surprise me if AP and other national MSM outlets simply didn’t pick up on it. The story’s too big not to cover, but they’ve certainly been trying to downplay it.
Every TV news story I’ve seen has used the same video footage of old, “pre-enhancement” screenings (no doubt provided by the TSA). They show a screener lightly moving the back of the hand around the underside of someone’s breasts or quickly sliding the back of the hand up someone’s inner thigh and barely even approaching the crotch. But that’s certainly not the current technique and not what has people outraged.
Only in a few local media outlets do you even get a ”hint” of what the “enhanced” gropings are like — this image from the ”Denver Post” is an example. (They supposedly have a whole gallery of photos here, but the images aren’t appearing for me right now.)
Rick Shultz said
As usual you make a couple of very good points Richard. But there are one or two things that I
find it impossible to believe. 1. I can’t believe that only ONE of these soldiers even mentioned this
to someone. I think it much more likely that at least two or three of them, AFTER getting re-
introduced to their families, probably DID call local media outlets and relate this clusterfuck to them.
I just can’t swallow the idea that soldiers who just spent possibly up to a year getting shot at for this government would let this stupid hoo-ha go unreported. 2. I also have a hard time believing that
the mainstream media would downplay this of their own accord. I find it much easier to believe
that they were TOLD to downplay this if they wanted their people to be able to travel by air.:=)
All in all, it makes a lot more sense that this story was quashed by the Obama administration, than
that it was simply lost in the shuffle. It’s just too big for the media to pass up unless they HAD to.
rgcombs said
Rick, do you really find it hard to believe that the MSM would, of their own accord, downplay or ignore a story that might embarrass the current administration? Really? I mean, really?? 🙂
Rick Shultz said
Yeah I kinda do Richard for a couple of reasons. One, not everybody in the MSM is a screaming, blathering liberal who thinks Obama is God. And two, reporters are a lot like sharks. When
they’re really hungry they’ll go for anything thrashing in the water. And they don’t care a lot about how it tastes. :=)