What's with these failures by the U.S.?

January 17, 2010 12:36 am

On Dec. 31, The Free Lance-Star ran an AP story about how African Union troops in Somalia stopped a bomb-laden passenger from boarding a Daallo Airlines plane in Mogadishu ["Airport suspect held in Somali," Dec. 31].

This contrasts with the Nigerian man, already identified as a radicalized threat to the U.S., who later strolled unimpeded aboard a Northwest Airlines plane in Amsterdam, and was prevented from blowing the plane out of the sky over Detroit only by the alert response of a Dutch passenger.

Daallo is not considered to be one of the world's top airlines. Somalia is not considered to be a First World, or a Second World, or even a Third World state. It is a failed state.

Northwest/Delta is one of the country's premier airlines and operates under the strict supervision of the U.S. government's Department of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration.

Also on Dec. 31, the TV was full of reports about how another branch of the U.S. government, the CIA, had permitted an Afghan suicide bomber to amble into one of its own recreational facilities and kill seven of its agents, wounding many more.

One might reasonably infer from the above events that a medical patient in this country could expect to receive better health care from a system administered by the African Union, and applied by Congolese witch doctors, than the U.S. government system that is about to be foisted on us by Congress.

Stew Engel

Fredericksburg