You have hit the nail on the head, DOME...
I spend quite a few hours on the wrong side of the cockpit door during my many flights back and forth between Japan and the USA. During the most recent experience, in April this year, which was also my first trip to the USA since 9/11, I was quite simply stunned to disbelief at the measures being taken to ensure "security" at Stateside airports.
My wife, son (age 5) and I boarded in NGO after the usual business, no untoward hassles this side of the pond. We packed the usual family kit for a 3 week overseas trip, absolutely NOTHING, I thought, to be concerned about. No pocketknives, leathermans, nail cutters, eating utensils, or live dildos. The flight on the usual red, grey and white was uneventful and we arrived on schedule in Detroit.
Now I'm never particularly pleased about being a passenger on anything that moves, and NGO-DTW is a nice long haul, so needless to say I was ready to get transferred to our connecting flight to GRR post haste and be done with the whole experience, as I usually am.
After clearing passport check we headed toward the transfer area to get our bags to haul them through customs and drop them on the conveyor to be put on the next flight. There was a security checkpoint to be gone through, and we dutifully lined up. I went first, was cleared, and headed on. It was a moment later when I realized my wife was no longer trailing along, and with some consternation also realized that the flashing lights and associated commotion at the checkpoint were for HER...
I of course hurried back, only to find myself on a collision course with a living, breathing G.I. Joe with real loaded weapons, who warned me menacingly to stay clear. I explained it was my wife, what's the problem, etc... He ordered me to go to the other side of the room, which I flatly refused to do. He threatened to call the Dade county sherriff, an instinct I wholeheartedly told him I endorsed, if he wanted to make a complete fool of himself.
Meanwhile time is passing, my son is careening around the area like his thrusters, navigation and visual have gone completely off line, and poor Mrs. rotated, all 40 kilos of her, is standing helpless at the checkpoint, nothing moving past her at all except the comments of her fellow passengers, stacking up like sand in a plugged hourglass.
In answer to the 10 minutes of continuous frantic pages from the check booth a wizened old woman of about 70 years of age finally came scurrying up from somewhere. I had by now reached and uneasy truce with Joe; I agreed not to move too quickly and in return he hadn't begun shooting me or calling in the National Guard, a situation I felt comfortable with at the time. We were ushered to a table at the far end of the room where Mrs. r was ordered to remove her shoes, which were dutifully wiped with a little white circle of some cloth; the cloth was then placed into a machine on the table. While it whirred and buzzed, I questioned this frail little link in our national defense as to what she and her trusty machine were doing, and WHY. Her response, that the shoes were being tested for explosives, caused me to have such a fit of laughter that only the thought of Joe and his itchy trigger finger could stop me. That is, until she told me that my wife had been singled out for this first-class treatment because, concealed deep in her sewing bag, was an actual pair of SEWING SCISSORS (blade length 1.5cm).
As an American I take the events of 9/11 as seriously as anyone else. I knew some of the people in the Towers on that day; thankfully they all got out.
Much more difficult to lend an ounce of credulity to this half-a$$ed attempt to prove to anyone with a single living brain cell that the good ole' USA is "on the ball" when it comes to rectifying any of the security issues raised by 9/11 or subsequent incidents. Anyone with half a mind who has passed through a security checkpoint in the States KNOWS this is true; it is obvious that the majority of the staff couldn't land a job at burgers-r-us, thus were forced to accept the lower paying job of securing the airports of the United States against all comers, friend or foe.
Had we originated in the US I might have seen it...oh, yes, scissors, well,...I suppose we'll pick up some new ones at destination... The fact that Mrs. r had managed to "smuggle" them through the terminal at NGO, and had managed to keep them from hacking through the cockpit door or otherwise causing commotion or mayhem during the 12 hour flight that PRECEEDED the security check stands as a testament to her will and determination to confine their activities to clipping threads and thus not be completely BORED OFF HER A$$ during the 20 some odd hours of travel that is required for us to travel from one home to another, including the 30 minute connecting flight from which she was banned from posessing such a dangerous implement.
The terrorists have already won, if you count as a success the complete ineptitiue and confusion their activities have revealed. All we have done with these attempts to "satisfy the travelling public" is anesthesize any last living will and common sense that may have been present before the attacks. Like sheep to the slaughter, the American public, years ago having learned to cry for the laywers at the first sign of trouble and thus absolve themselves of all responsibility for anything whatsoever, is at long last being led down the final path to a world where reason is no longer a factor. The terrorists are only the sheepdog; the path one well prepared.
God help us all.