9/11 Commission Air Cargo Screening Mandate

News of suspicious packages arriving from Yemen plundered the country into a panicked state of fear Friday morning. Some are calling it a fake terror plot (see videos below) thanks to the President’s remarks four days before the midterm election. Such an October surprise cannot be discounted entirely, but the point of this article is to chastise the Obama administration for dragging it’s feet on the 9/11 Commission air cargo screening mandate whether this particular scare today is a contrived fake terror plot or not.

U.S. President Barack Obama laughs with Vice President Joe Biden at an event for candidate Chris Coons, the Democrat running for a Senate seat against Christine O'Donnell in Wilmington, Delaware October 15, 2010. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS)

It was September 15, 2009, near the anniversary of 911 that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) finally got around to implementing a cargo screening program for carrier packages entering the Unites States. The so-called Certified Cargo Screening Program (CCSP) implemented recommendations from the 9/11 commission issued three years earlier.

The mandate required that all cargo containers carried on passenger airplanes be inspected by August 2010. It went into effect only partially on August 2nd and inexplicably the government is inspecting the wrong cargo. The initial focus is on domestic to domestic passenger flights and domestic to international locations.

I’m with you. Nobody cares about terrorism leaving our country except for Obama’s administration. For typical reasons (it’s harder) the government is not inspecting flights to the United States originating from foreign countries. Turns out that some inspection is occurring before the flights depart places like Yemen, but only 50% according to the TSA.

Additionally cargo planes themselves, 99% of cargo entering the United States, are not covered by the mandate and not screened. FedEx and UPS screen their own cargo using their own methods and standards of care. Obama and the Democrat majority in Congress have done nothing to close this preposterous loophole in our shoddy inspection methods which mandates that precious dollars be allocated to where they are needed least.

You can read more about it here and here and here and here.

Meanwhile just about everything about this threat is appearing to be overblown. In the final analysis it appears that two packages entered the United States which contained no explosives, but we know by now that this incidents have been happening regularly for years. Normally the federal government keeps the busts quiet so as not to upset the public over little things and not to alert terrorists to our sources and methods of intelligence gathering. The president seems to have made a big deal over very little. Why?

In fact, talk of a “fake terror” threat is escalating on talk radio and cable channels this afternoon. And it is natural for people to be suspicious of the timing of all this publicity coming just four days before the midterm elections when you consider how small the threat appeared to be. In Obama’s own words, his speech discussing two packages made it obvious that a presidential address to the nation was unnecessary. Two packages were found overseas leading to a preplexing overreaction domestically that grounded all commercial and some passenger traffic. Yawn.

We’ve seen this story before. Politicians have their back to the wall and try to create a crisis directly before an election that is designed to make us reliant on experienced incumbents to bail us out. It’s a common tactic to create a fuss before elections, but that usually happens by local state level politicians rather than fear mongering by our own president to help is embattled party.

Your thoughts about the success of our 9/11 Commission air cargo screening mandate, fake terror threats and a possibly manufactured October surprise?

(source:rightpundits.com)