A PARTICULAR-COLORED HERRING

In the neverending battle to blame September 11 on anybody but a group of Islamic militants, the latest entry appears to be airport security screeners. Not that there isn’t an element of truth to this, but still, when I wonder who’s to blame for this, I keep coming up with the same nineteen names, none of whom worked for the government.

Can we stop this now? Please? Is this really going to make us feel better, when we’ve got an Earl Fenstermacher of the FAA or Kathy Gibbelmann of Logan Airport to make a scapegoat for the fact that we can’t bring the true perpetrators of this act to justice because they eliminated the middleman and killed themselves before the rest of us got a chance to?

This closing paragraph is a hoot, though:

Teague said she was surprised at how relaxed security was, given that airlines had received three warnings from the Federal Aviation Administration. One such warning, issued in June 2001, cited “unconfirmed reports that American interests may be the target of a terrorist threat from extremist groups.”

If there’s been a moment in the past twenty years when that hasn’t been true, I’d like to know when.