So what exactly is Barack HUSSEIN Obama playing at? Is he compromising the safety of non-Muslims so as not to offend his Muslim brothers? The dropping of extra security against ‘terror-prone’ Muslim air travellers is a measure as stupid as it is dangerous. How long will it take for disaster to happen, I wonder? And who’ll have blood on his hands then? If Muslims are insulted by the extra security needed, then they should stop trying to kill infidels, and if they did that, there would no longer be any need for any extra-ordinary security measures at all. – © Mark
TIMES ONLINE: The Obama Administration, facing protests from allies, announced today that it will stop requiring extra airport security screening for all travellers from "terror-prone" Muslim nations.
The United States will instead institute a "tailored" security system that relies on profiling individual travellers, based on intelligence such as their physical description or travel pattern.
Officials said that the new system would result in fewer passengers being pulled aside when travelling to America.
President Obama announced a crackdown on travellers from 14 "terror-prone" countries — 13 largely Muslim nations plus Cuba — after the failed "underwear bombing" of a Detroit-Amsterdam flight on Christmas Day.
Passport-holders and passengers from those countries were required to undergo full body pat-downs and manual baggage search as part of extra airport screening.
The emergency measures were intended to prevent would-be bombers like the Nigerian suspect from boarding US-bound planes.
Farouk Adbulmutallab has been charged with trying to blow up the Northwestern Airlines Flight 253 after he allegedly tried to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear, suffering severe burns but failing to bring down the plane.
Mr Abdulmutallab, 25, a former student at University College London, is understood to have told investigators that he was trained as a suicide bomber by an al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen.
Mr Adbulmutallab's name was placed on a 550,000-name list of possible terror suspects, known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, or TIDE, after his father tipped off the US embassy in Nigeria about his concerns.
But Mr Adbulmutallab was never put on a 2,500-name "no-fly list" nor a 13,500-long "selectee" list requiring extra airport screening.
The blanket security measures imposed after the failed bombing affected all travellers from Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Cuba.
The list offended allies like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Nigeria and Algeria who are partners of the United States in the fight against al-Qaeda. >>> James Bone, New York | Friday, April 02, 2010
