Don't you feel safer?

Here are two items that’ll catch the eye of anyone who has had to jettison a coffee before walking through an airport security check:

“WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded al-Qaida has rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since just before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, The Associated Press has learned.”

“WASHINGTON, New York Times, July 11 — Undercover Congressional investigators set up a bogus company and obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March that would have allowed them to buy the radioactive materials needed for a so-called dirty bomb.

The undercover operation involved an application from a fake construction company, supposedly based in West Virginia, that the investigators had incorporated even though it had no offices, Internet site or employees. Its only asset was a postal box.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials did not visit the company or try to interview its executives in person. Instead, within 28 days, they mailed the license to the West Virginia postal box, the report says.

That license, on a standard-size piece of paper, also had so few security measures incorporated into it that the investigators, using commercially available equipment, were able to modify it easily, removing a limit on the amount of radioactive material they could buy, the report says.

With that forged document, the auditors approached two industrial equipment companies to arrange to buy dozens of portable moisture density gauges, which cost about $5,000 each and are used to read the density of soil and pavement when building highways. The machines include americium-241 and cesium-137, radioactive substances commonly used in industrial equipment. Auditors, convinced they had enough evidence to prove their point, called off the ruse before the devices were delivered.”

It would appear that despite the billions spent each month chasing terrorists in Afganistan and Iraq (and elsewhere), Al-Queda is as strong as it was in August 2001.

And the next time your 6 month old baby is asked to remove that piece of leather from the Baby Gap called a “shoe” by an Airline X-Ray technician, just remember that you could apply for a licence to purchase radioactive substances in the U.S. with less information than it takes to use a credit card at some department stores.

MRM