Full Body Scanners? IR Scanners? Effective?

One of the loudest responses to the Christmas Day Muslim crotch bomber has been the call for full-body scanners in airports. One side touts how this will detect these types of bombs and another side screams about privacy concerns.

There’s a much bigger issue – they won’t work.

Yes, they would, with experienced, well-trained, and alert monitors, likely have helped to detect the bag of powder in Abdul's crotch. But what if that powder were spread out? Evenly distributed in the lining of his jacket? Distributed in 4 or 5 pens or pencils in his carry-on?

Realistically neither full-body scanners nor IR scanners will provide much improved security. Islamic terrorists are plentiful, well funded, and well organized. They will figure out easy ways around these scanners and their plots will surely branch out well beyond their current fascination with planes.

President Obama made the right move with increased security for those coming from or through known terroristic countries. That is only one tiny step though (assuming he can get other countries to abide by it).

If we don’t want terrorists blowing up innocent people in our planes, trains, and café’s we need to deal with the people carrying out these spineless acts. We need to eliminate their funding, their ability to organize and recruit so easily, and we need to eliminate them. Otherwise we will live increasingly in the grip of fear of the next attack and always being one step behind.