MEDIA ROOTS- Follow the money and you will always find the truth.

U.S. Marine Major General Smedley Butler, one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor, wrote War is a Racket in 1935:

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”

If General Butler were still alive, he would probably write, “The War on Terror is a Racket on Steroids.”

On Christmas Day in 2009, a young Nigerian man named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded Delta Airlines Flight 253 bound to Detroit from Amsterdam. During the flight, he was caught trying to detonate explosives that he’d hidden in his underwear. His photo and story was instant “breaking news” and was broadcasted worldwide over and over again.

The hysteria built up by the media was immediate and non-stop. They constantly parroted that “the system didn’t work,” “he slipped through the cracks,”  and “they didn’t’ connect the dots”.

Janet Napolitano, the present Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), attempted to quell the hysteria by stating on CNN that the system did work.  She was immediately ridiculed and wasn’t seen on TV again for weeks- but she was absolutely correct. The system did work. She apparently didn’t get the memo of what the “official” government story was supposed to be.

On Jan 27, 2010, there was a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing titled “Flight 253: Learning Lessons from an Averted Tragedy.”

During the hearing, Patrick F. Kennedy, Secretary Management of the Department of State, stated that “They had the individual under investigation and our revocation action would have disclosed the U.S. Governments interest in the individual and ended our colleagues’ ability to quietly pursue the case and identify terrorists’ plans and co-conspirators.”

According to a recent article, “The revelation that U.S. intelligence agencies made a deliberate decision to allow Abdulmutallab to board the commercial flight, without any special airport screening, has been buried in the media. ‘Revocation action would have disclosed what they were doing,’ Kennedy said in the testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep his visa increased the chances that federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he was accused of working with, ‘rather than simply knocking out one solider in that effort.'”

Additionally, there were eye witness reports from passengers on Flight 253 that the suspect was escorted onto the aircraft by a “sharp dressed man.” Why wasn’t this information breaking news like the original story was? The politicians and the media didn’t want it to be, because they wanted to use this event to justify the enforcement of the new body scanners.

Even though DHS Secretary Napolitano had been silenced, former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff was featured on numerous news programs fear mongering the public into thinking that since the system failed, we now need these scanners to keep us safe.

One important thing he neglected to mention was that he works as a lobbyist for Rapiscan, the company that makes the body scanners.

The Washington Post reported that “Michael Chertoff, Former Department of Homeland Security, is the head of the Chertoff Group, the lead cheerleader for what is being called the Full Body Scanner Lobby.”

Furthermore, President Barack Obama recently handed Rapiscan a one billion dollar contract to deploy the scanners – no questions asked. On his recent trip to India, Obama traveled with Deepak Chopra, chairman and CEO of OSI Systems- the parent company of Rapiscan Systems. 

In the months leading up to Christmas of 2009, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) conveniently began removing the so-called “puffer machines” from U.S. airports at a cost of nearly one million dollars. Puffer machines are bomb detection machines that have been used for years, yet are suddenly now deemed unreliable. 

Thankfully, the American people are starting to wake up to these police state tactics and are now refusing to use these scanners. They are not yet mandatory, and you can still opt out of using them. But the TSA doesn’t advertise that little known fact.

Alarmingly, scientists are also warning that the full-body airport scanners pose serious health risks and could cause cancer.

On July 14, 2010,  two Senators proposed a bi-partisan bill, called “Securing Aircraft From Explosives Responsibly: Advanced Imaging Recognition, or the SAFER AIR Act”, which would make going through the scanners mandatory. The Democrats and Republicans can’t seem to agree on anything except forcing people to go through potentially cancer-causing X-ray machines in which the naked bodies of children and adults will be on display to everyone in the TSA.

Now, in a further attempt to intimidate flyers who refuse to submit to the scanners, the TSA has started a new much more invasive full body search much like the police do to criminals after arrest, which includes groping genitalia. However, flyers are reporting that even though they go through the scanners, they are still being subjected to physical “pat downs” as well.

In an attempt to dispel privacy fears, the TSA claimed that the scanners don’t and can’t store the naked body images. This is another lie. The simple fact is that the images are potential forensic evidence that must be kept and stored on record.

“The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said documents it has obtained from DHS show the machines used by the department’s Transportation Security Administration at some U.S. airports also can record and store images from the body scanners even though they are slightly different from the scanners used at federal courts. When asked if TSA has stored any images from passengers, EPIC staff counsel Ginger McCall said TSA claims it has not stored such images, but EPIC believes that statement is false. She said the airport body scanners are not secure enough and voiced concern that the images stored on them could be transferred to an external device such as a USB flash drive.”

In another alarming revelation, Forbes reports that the government is now deploying mobile full body scanners in vans that look like normal delivery trucks.  These vans have the capability to see through your clothes as you walk down the street, into your car and even your house!

I implore everyone to refuse to go through the scanners. Write and call your representatives in Congress to let them know you are against any mandatory body scanning, invasive body groping searches and mobile body scanners.

If you are on Facebook, there’s a body scanner protest page with over 14,200 members called Facebook Against Airport Full Body Scanners. I urge you to join it and spread the word.

If these violations are not stopped, I predict these mobile body scanners will soon be deployed at the mall, movie theaters, sporting events – everywhere.

The most important question we should be asking is: Why? Why are they deploying these police state devices and tactics? I don’t believe these scanners are being used for our safety, but for our control. We are now all assumed to be guilty until proven innocent.

General Butler would be absolutely horrified at the ultimate racket that is the “terror industrial complex” and the destruction of the U.S. Constitution because of it.

Written by Nick

Body Scanners: Just the Beginning?