whatshouldiuse, what you have posted is exactly what I mean by a farce. All that effort based solely on the fact of where, when or how the ticket was purchased.
The delays and inconvenience caused by this sole method of searching everyone without any form of profiling for the sake of political correctness which then causes massive delays and hold ups because grandma Jones has to take her shoes off and open her bag to have her nail clippers confiscated.
I have been through US security since Sept 11th, as crew, in uniform and although the people at security were efficient and polite, even apologetic, it was obvious that the exercise was more than just a bit cosmetic. It is the stories coming from other crew about the outrageously idiotic actions of some security personnel, without any logic applied to the situation that is the main reason I am condemning the present system of only stopping weapons and not the users of them from boarding.
Without wanting to get this thread way off course, with regard to Timothy McVeigh, maybe I am getting my wires crossed but I did see a programme on some fo the possible intelligence failures but it may have been about the search for him after the attack and not before. Besides, he did not try to do what the Al Quaida terrorists did and so is not necessarily relevant. If there was proper and well trained profilers ti si possible that they may have let someone like him slip through and that is where the second line of defence would have hopefully taken effect. The discovery of explosives or weapons.
I am not saying that profiling is the be all and end all but should certainly play a much more prominent role in an overall solution instead of the current reliance on X-ray machines and metal detectors. Nothing will be 100% effective against terrorists unless you shut down aviation and then you have allowed them win.