'One or Two' Passengers Can Wreck Entire TSA, Apparently

You might think a nationwide workforce so well-trained in stealing iPods and loose change would be able to withstand a few "nah I don't want to get cancer" opt-outs, but that is not the case! The government's finest child-molesting force is so fragile and worthless that "just one or two recalcitrant passengers at an airport is all it takes to cause huge delays," according to the American Society of Travel Agents. Gosh, sounds like this country is screwed.

The TSA is in the midst of a full media blitz this week as it prepares (?) for millions of air travelers being faced with porno-scanners and aggressive ass-grabbing and vaginal probes for the first time. The Obama Administration's top airport security guy has "urged passengers angry over safety procedures not to boycott airport body scans," according to the AP, and an airline travel trade group is saying that basically one or two people choosing not to be sprayed with cancer waves is enough to cripple America's airports.

"Just one or two recalcitrant passengers at an airport is all it takes to cause huge delays," said Paul Ruden, a spokesman for the American Society of Travel Agents, which has warned its more than 8,000 members about delays resulting from the body-scanner boycott. "It doesn't take much to mess things up anyway — especially if someone purposely tries to mess it up."

Body scans take as little as 10 seconds, but people who decline the process must submit to a full pat-down, which takes much longer. That could cause a cascade of delays at dozens of major airports, including those in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta. nationwide security programs, "there is a continual process of refinement and adjustment to ensure that best practices are applied."

Ha ha, right. So when the rules are completely different from day to day and especially from airport to airport -- a baby bottle is Osama bin Laden at one screening line, coffee cups full of whisky and hand grenades are welcome at others -- that's just the "continual process of refinement and adjustment to ensure that best practices are applied."

Also, for the brown-nosers in the comments who want to encourage everyone to be Good Germans, it should be noted again that these porno-scanner machines aren't even used inIsraeli airports, and that the peculiar idiocy of shuffling shoeless through a conga line of gropey security slobs is restricted to America. [ Associated Press ]