TSA Is Bad, But Last Experience Was With Good Agents........

Ok, so I do try to be a fair person. Which means if you do something that I think is beneath you, no
matter how much I like you, I will tell you and if you do something good, no matter how little I like
you, I will compliment you. In this case the 'you' is the TSA. So let me start with my compliment, no
matter how little I like them. Recently, my daughter's basketball team traveled to play in a National
Championship, which required flying basically cross country. I was one of the parents that traveled
with the team and the defacto 'travel expert'. Since all the girls were young most didn't have official
picture IDs, mine probably being the only exception, and only 3 girls were traveling with a parent and
my daughter and I do not share the same surname needless to say we were a challenge. The group was in total 17 travelers with about 10 being 'under-age' travelers. So I did my part to make things easy, but informing first the ticket agent and then the first TSA employee about our group number and ages. The TSA lady at the Florida airport that were left from actually opened up a new line just for our group. The next TSA employee that checked IDs against boarding passes personally handled our whole group so that there was no confusion. On the way back, we received similar accommodations from the TSA agents at O'Hare. With the exception of airline personnel at Detroit, who were great at the gate and on the flight, on this trip TSA actually seemed to understand customer service, something that is sorely lacking in airline travel in the last 10 or more years. Me complimenting TSA is huge considering what I think of the agency as a whole.
The above statement aside, let me say, in scope of extreme security that is the TSA today, I am
absolutely and categorically against their existence. The 9/11 Commission stated that the security
measures that were in place prior to 9/11 were adequate to prevent such actions as happened on that
day. The whole and entire failure of security on 9/11 was lazy security workers at the Maine airport
where they hijackers cleared security. It was also reported that a check of airline manifests and other
evidence suggested that the hijackers had traveled though various airports up and down the East Coast, looking for just such laziness and complacency in the security. Once this was determined the rest as they say is history.
Had it been my decision to make, I would not have changed one thing about our security at airports. I
would have fired the security personnel that were on duty at the time and their supervisor. I would have replaced them with more competent personnel and been done with it. What is my logic and rationale? The primary goal of terrorism is my logic and rationale. The whole goal of terrorism is to use terror to create such fear as to change your lifestyle or the actions of a government. That being said, once we totally changed how we fly; the terrorists won and we lost.
Which by that measure means that the GWOT was a complete and total waste. Why wage war against an enemy that you have already admitted defeat to by changing your lifestyle and the way the
government functions. It is no wonder that conspiracy theorists have had an absolute field day with
9/11 and the fall out of it for over 10 years now. Not to mention that in the rush to “keep us safe” not one single American seems to remember the words of Mr. Benjamin Franklin...'Those that would sacrifice liberty for the sake of security, will have neither and deserves neither.' And we have absolutely given up much too much of our liberty for complacent lazy people to 'feel secure'. Yet, in truth the only security is in their illusion that we are safer.
How so? Terrorists love to create carnage, the more blood and guts the better. Before 9/11 the number
of people clustered in a single area in the airport was limited to maybe say 100 people waiting in a
rather large and open area of a gate, now you have hundreds of people clustered and contained within
the security check point waiting lines, literally being sitting duck soft targets of a suicide bomber. Now you security dreamers can say well that shows that we are MORE safe, but the conspiracy theorist would say, that proves that it was the government and now that they have you sliding down that slippery slope of NO Individual Rights, they have what they want and we are safe until they want
more!