From: "Rich Gauszka" 


"Don Hills"  wrote in message
news:ukEyFtgaXCEH092yn{at}attglobal.net...
> In article ,
> "Phil Payne"  wrote:
>>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/05/immigration_search/
>>
>>Another eye-watering reason not to visit the USA.  Could be an effective
>>was
>>to keep terrorists out.
>>
>>And everybody else.
>
> In the same vein:
> http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3480/features/7909/search_and_seizure.html
>
> Like she says, avoid transiting the USA. I know you've long advocated
> this.
> I've also pointed out that our national airline is buying Boeing's new
> dreamliners to expand their new route to London, via Hong Kong.
>
> --
>

The airport screeners in this country appear to abuse everyone equally
including Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. The screeners are both
ill-trained and ill-mannered

http://www.snopes.com/military/medal.htm

 "They just kept passing it around there were eight or nine or ten of them
who handled it before it was over," he said. "They had found it
in my pocket at the airport, and they thought it was suspicious. It's
shaped like a star, and they were looking at the metal edges of it, like it
was a weapon. I asked for it back, but they kept handing it to each other
and inspecting it. I was told to move to a separate area.

"I told them - just turn it over. The engraving on the back explains
everything. But they thought they must have something potentially dangerous
here.

"I told them exactly what it was - I said, 'That's my Congressional
Medal of Honor.'"

The man relating that story was retired Gen. Joe Foss, 86. His experience
last month in Arizona at the international airport in Phoenix - may be the
ultimate symbol of the out-of-kilter times we are going through. We are so
afraid of terrorists in our midst that what happened to Foss is not only
believable, but perhaps even inevitable:

The Congressional Medal of Honor will be taken from its recipient because
it looks vaguely ominous.

And now, almost 60 years later, the Medal of Honor was being handed from
one skeptical security screener to another in the Phoenix airport, while
Foss, at 86, took his boots and belt off as ordered.

---------

We shouldn't fault airport security officers for not recognizing a Medal of
Honor on sight; not many people get to see one in their lives. But a closer
examination by security personnel would have shown them what it was, and at
that point in the proceedings they fell down on the job. Rather than
treating an obviously cooperative passenger courteously and allowing him to
explain what the suspect item was, they shuffled the general back and forth
and required him to remove his boots, belt, hat, and tie - several times
each. The delay they subjected him to almost caused him to miss his flight.
That is no way to treat any 86-year-old man, let alone a war hero and
former governor.

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5