In yet another case of life imitating satire, we have the US warning of airline plot to implant bombs in people (what a clumsy headline…. sounds like the airlines are implanting bombs in passengers)
The White House said Wednesday there was no danger of an imminent attack on airplanes after reports that terror groups were mulling implanting bombs into the bodies of passengers.
The assurances came after news that the US administration warned airlines that extremist groups were considering surgically implanting explosives into people to try to beat tight airport security measures.
Passengers flying to the United States could now face even tougher screening measures, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, Nicholas Kimball, told the Los Angeles Times.
“These measures are designed to be unpredictable, so passengers should not expect to see the same activity at every international airport,” Kimball said, adding existing methods could not detect plastic explosives under the skin.
“Measures may include interaction with passengers, in addition to the use of other screening methods such as pat-downs and the use of enhanced tools and technologies.”
I warned about this possibility here around 18 months ago. The salient points:
In the meantime, ever more restrictive airport boarding regulations seem a certainty, and ever more intrusive searches, until we figure out that we have no choice but to identify who is more likely to have evil intent, and give them more scrutiny, because we surely don’t have the resources or the time to give the necessary scrutiny to everyone, including your grandmother in a wheelchair from Peoria, or Trenton, who may choose not to visit you next Christmas due to a distaste for body cavity searches and x-ray glasses (like the ones they used to sell in D.C. Comics, except these will work) in the hands of prurient security types.
Sooner or later, someone is going to figure out how to make high-explosive dentures and hip/knee replacements. While Christian “fundamentalists” will be getting only fluoride treatments, young adult male Islamic fanatics will be lining up to have all their teeth pulled and get dental implants made of enamel coated plastique. I predict an influx of wealthy foreign nationals, of Islamic extraction, into European schools of orthopedic surgery, particularly focusing on lower extremity joint replacements. Our too-faithful recent oral surgery patients, who will not have flossed much, will enter airplanes with a slight limp. It’s tough to recover from double knee/double hip transplants, especially when it hurts to eat.
The other passengers will feel sorry for them, briefly.
Eventually, the only people on airplanes will be strip-searched people with no scars, who just endured body cavity searches and had their stomachs pumped. But they will be very, very safe, wearing their airline-issued flying uniforms. When they land at their destinations, they will report to the changing room/luggage area, where they’ll get their clothing back, which was sent in a transport plane. Cost of a ticket from L.A. to Phoenix? About $1,000.
Coming up next: explosive hair.
There has already been at least one other report of terrorist plans to implant bombs.
We’re moving way past having to look for bombs in your Nikes and Fruits of the Loom.
So what can we do about this? Will we carry the no-profiling policy to such a ludicrous extreme that random strip searches are going to be made to look for recent surgical scars, and then require CT Scans in the indicated area (and if that isn’t revealing, we can always have a team standing by for exploratory surgery, just to be sure…. brought to you by Obamacare, of course)?
Should we just reject anyone with recent surgical scars? That’ll be tough on the envirobabe groupies with recently acquired, uh, enhancements to the gifts of nature. Instead of flying first class to the next climate change seminar so they can mingle with rich Goreaphiles (in search of suitable husband material among the ecopagan intelligentsia, of course), they’ll have to stay home and watch it all on Skype… or worse yet, on Youtube. But hey…. that’s better for the environment anyway. And who knows what the nice Egyptian surgeon with the funny name inserted besides a little silicon… Maybe there’s a reason something felt a bit lumpy (did he show you the photos from his relaxing summer vacation in the mountains of Pakistan?). We’d better keep all well-endowed ladies off the planes, just in case… unless, of course, some self-sacrificing TSA official wants to check them all, one at a time.
I think I have an idea. We can’t profile for ethnicity/nationality/religious background, so says the great Ozbama from behind the curtain (he’s just clandestinely checking up on those TSA officers, his version of Undercover Boss). But here’s what we can do, and indeed there is a tie-in with Obamacare’s plan to computerize all medical records for “efficiency.” Let’s just have everyone fill out a questionaire at the airport on all recent medical procedures. Let’s get a new generation of scanners going that can detect surgical scars. And let’s have computer software that compares the results of the questionaire, the scan, and the complete medical/surgical record that will be online for everyone (obviously, this will give the Obama administration the pretext it needs to extend Obamacare into the entire middle east, parts of Africa, Indonesia, and other Islamic regions. Hope and change.). If there is a scar or a mention of a procedure that isn’t on the “universal medical record” for each individual, we yank the offender out of the queue for “special processing.” Allah alone knows what that might entail. I think I don’t want to know.
I was intrigued by this line from the news report above:
“Measures may include interaction with passengers, in addition to the use of other screening methods such as pat-downs and the use of enhanced tools and technologies.”
“Interaction with passengers,” eh? How will a “pat down” locate a surgically implanted bomb? I’m guessing the terrorists have already done dry runs by inserting passengers with recent surgical work (maybe even something benign implanted internally), just to see how well it works.
“Enhanced tools and technologies”? Hmm…. maybe TSA has developed the tricorder.
Staying home is looking better and better. With Skype, Youtube, Netflix and satellite TV, what else do you need? International travel is over-rated, anyway. You can only tolerate being referred to as the “ugly American” so many times, and everyone knows the world hates America…. that’s why they all want to come here.
