The thin veil of the war on terror is shattered

Maurice O'Brien • Published 7 Jan 2010 10:00 Comments 1 Comment

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SINCE Christmas Day the sound of stable doors slamming shut has been almost deafening.

When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and his syringe went pop on board Flight 253, despite his presence on a terrorist watch list that should have prevented him getting within touching distance of even an Airfix model plane kit, the world went on its latest red alert.

Which proves one thing. The so-called war on terror, real enough for the servicemen and women valiantly losing their lives in Afghanistan, is pretty much a veneer everywhere else, especially when more than eight years after September 11 we're still dithering about installing full body scanners at airports.

Had governments not messed about with a series of half measures they might have had the cash to buy this kit long ago. Our resident human abacus, Old Prudence, told us last week that Britain's trebled its security budget. But one wonders what the cash was spent on when, in the very next breath, he announces a full review of airport security, and a conference on Yemen which will further drain protection resources.

Perhaps his review will explain why a belt's a potentially deadly weapon at one airport but not another, why every passenger's a likely shoe bomber in some countries but not others. Maybe the variety keeps would be terrorists guessing. Or is it just to torture arthritic old ladies and gents?

Let's face it, the world's most technologically sophisticated nation has been caught out once again by its own complacency and arrogance; the same complacency and arrogance which might have prevented September 11 except that the great and powerful United States didn't need security on internal flights did it?

Abdulmutallab would have been stopped in his tracks by moderate use of passenger profiling but, of course, that might upset people. Stuff that. Upset them, and while they're at it, if anyone's daft enough to want to give my scanned carcass anything more than a cursory glance they're welcome.

- TORY leader Dave is apparently offering rewards for our wizard ideas for improving the country. Hopefully his cheque's in the post, because here's mine. Scrap the Blairite gimmicks and quackery.

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tony
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Jan 7, 19:53
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How glad I am to hear such pungently worded and robust stuff from our wizard editor himself. The rest of the nation desperately needs to take a leaf out of his book, but avoiding the excesses of the nutters in the BNP. We seem all to have become collective wimps, cowed into submission by political correctness, the fear of litigation, the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act (somebody tell me what is meant by "etc." in this wording please), and the use by politicians of strangulated euphemisms such as "hard working" meaning "hardly working", and "industrial action" meaning "anti-industrial inaction". We need to become more honest and more robust. In the context of this editorial we need to be able to say that some Muslims regard the rest of us as inferior beings, "infidels" being the euphemism they use. Of course many others are sane, kind, charming, friendly and intelligent people; but we need to be on our guard. If we go on being totally spineless Britain will soon be overwhelmed by Sharia Law.

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