"Unususal punishment & flailing over-reaction"

Air travellers are being punished for the failure of the ‘security’ services who claim to be protecting us from terror.

We now see how useless this expensive and self-important industry is. Not only did they fail to act on a specific warning about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab delivered by his own father.

They even knew that underpants-borne bombs of this type were being made in Yemen, because on August 28, 2009, Abdullah Hassan al-Asiri, who had also been in Yemen, used a near-identical device to try to kill the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef.

While it makes sense to use more body-scanners (I have reached the age when I am quite flattered that the Government wants to know what I look like naked), the other measures in response to the Detroit incident are actually mad…denying pressurised, bursting passengers the use of the lavatory for an hour is a cruel and unusual punishment and a flailing over-reaction. Simple vigilance would be far more effective anyway. - Peter Hitchens (not his  brother Christopher) in The Daily Mail