PDA

View Full Version : Soldiers deserve TSA's respect in screenings at airports



fontman
08-15-06, 07:28 AM
Soldiers deserve TSA's respect in screenings at airports
Steven Alvarez | Special to the Sentinel
Posted August 15, 2006

A little-known fact about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that the U.S. military requires soldiers to travel in uniform from theater. An even lesser known fact is that the Transportation Security Administration aggressively targets war veterans as they travel home to their loved ones.

At Baltimore's airport on my way back to Orlando from Iraq, there were about 50 soldiers in line, waiting to be cleared by TSA. I noticed soldiers taking off clothing, and then they assumed the position so commonly seen in police-chase videos, arms and legs spread wide as a screener passed a wand close to their bodies. Soldiers were asked to remove belts, boots and shirts, and their carry-on bags were ransacked.

"We're fighting a war. Do you guys think we're a threat?" I asked as I spread my legs and arms.

The screener replied, "I dunno," and kept his wand in motion.

Before long my leave was completed and I was at Orlando International Airport, standing in line, waiting to clear security again. This time my wife accompanied me through the checkpoint so we could spend every last minute together before I returned to Iraq.

I wore my desert uniform, and as I approached the gate, a TSA screener directed my wife and me to additional screening after my bag had been inspected and scanned. My wife was searched, making an already miserable event, my leaving for war a second time, even worse than the first time.

Travelers shook their heads in disgust. One man glared incredulously at the screeners and said, "Unbelievable."

I was humiliated, not because I was being searched, but because I was being searched while wearing the cloth of the nation -- a U.S. military uniform. While wearing the flag of our nation on my sleeve, enroute to fight a war to support my government's interests, I was categorized as suspicious.

The same government that employs both the TSA and U.S. Army sent me a contradicting message. It trusted me enough to train me, give me a weapon and send me to do its dirty work, but it didn't trust me enough to fly on commercial airplanes with other citizens without close scrutiny.

"I don't agree with it," said a TSA screener. "We're just doing what we're told," she said. The airlines, the screener said, decide who is exempt from secondary personal searches.

The screener's comments were intriguing to me, and, in conversations with soldiers in Iraq and returning from Afghanistan, I learned that uniformed soldiers were routinely pulled aside and vetted through an extra layer of screening -- their carry-on bags searched and their bodies double-checked.

When I returned from the war, I asked an airline representative to exempt me from the second level of searches since I was in uniform and had military identification.

"We have nothing to do with who gets searched," she said. "That's TSA's decision."

At the checkpoint, I asked a TSA screener if I could be cleared just one time by the metal detectors and the luggage scanner since I was a military officer. She smiled and directed me to a line with no passengers in it.

I took off my boots and belts as other passengers did, and I put my carry-on bag on the scanner. After I walked through, without activating the metal detector, I was pulled aside. I was herded with other soldiers returning home from their war tours to a line for those who needed closer review. I was told to remove my shirt, assume the position, and then I was searched with a wand and my bag was unpacked.

Since then I've been further dismayed to learn the TSA doesn't even exempt severely wounded war veterans. According to the TSA, it tries to gracefully screen soldiers wounded in battle by making sure security screening is conducted "with empathy and respect."

"We want to make sure the overall experience for the service member is as expeditious and pleasant," as possible, the TSA Web site states.

Odds are wounded soldiers will set off metal detectors, but the TSA won't find weapons intended for use in hijackings, Instead, the TSA will learn their detectors were set off by the shrapnel still embedded in the soldiers' bodies, or the metal components of prosthetics, or plates that now hold service members' bodies together.

Welcome home. Thanks for your service.

---Steven Alvarez is an Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran who lives in Maitland. He wrote this commentary for the Orlando Sentinel.

Eric Hood
09-09-06, 05:49 PM
I hope the enemy respects our political correctness.

yellowwing
09-09-06, 07:27 PM
If I was assigned to penetrate Iranian port security, I might try it in their service uniform.

booksbenji
09-09-06, 07:37 PM
disabled Veterans have go thru at the areoport. Since 2003 with metal knees I still have to strip to skivvies and bare my rear cause of metal. I have all of the VA doc's and private doc's notes and forms that should exempt me. Takes 20 minutes to undo braces and take TEXAS cowboys boots and put back on. They offer help and I told 'em 2 go 2 HADES. This from the so called Int'l aeroport in Midland, TEXAS where Laura Bush's grown up in. I do make a loud protest and a former marine TSA would come, "Calm Down, Sgt, after I dropped my jeans :evilgrin: Now I am just rush thru and no ?!!!!

lucien2
09-09-06, 08:29 PM
I am in the private security business and while that seems harsh or insensitive to uniformed personnel, it still is a necessary evil that we have to live with. If you make one exception for a certain group then the integrity of the security program is threatened and would be exploited by the people that want us destroyed.

yellowwing
09-09-06, 08:34 PM
Exactly lucien! If you had 20 million to run an op, your dang right that you would know who was going to be on duty and what angle to manipulate them with.