I've been biding my time on this thread, but now I will cut loose.

Dogs will not stop the bombs from coming. If they did, there wouldn't be any more suicide bombers going off in Iraq now.

The people responsible for sending bombs to kill innocents aren't the people actually using the bombs. The responsible parties have power and control. What is it that people with power want? That is the motivation. It has little or nothing to do with hate.

I am an Ex-Pat living and working in the occupied zone of Baghdad with four different US Government badges driving a US government registered vehicle. Every day I am stopped and searched and the car I drive is searched at least three times. If you search everyone, then it doesn't really matter much anymore. Getting searched is better than getting dead. You do what you gotta.

Iraqi men and women who enter the green zone every day to come to work for us have to raise their shirts at the checkpoint as they walk by. Yes, even the women. Islamic culture finds this quite repugnant, but they do what they have to do to survive, and getting paid American dollars is survival. Again, you do what you gotta do.

I am searched at least once every time I come and go from Baghdad at the airports. So is anyone else that goes through the metal detector and sets off the alarm. I'd rather be searched than be in a fireball at 30,000 feet. It is a long walk home from here.

Random searches will be a lousy deterrant. They've already tried that here. It didn't work. Now they search everyone's everything. That stopped the car bombs and the strap on bombs from coming in the green zone, at least for now. The people who get searched don't like it, but they keep coming and going because this is where they get money.

I don't pack a firearm because it is against the rules, but I am allowed to pack the biggest, nastiest blade I can carry, concealed or otherwise. Like I said before, I have two SRKs and a couple 4 foot wooden impalers. Admittedly, they are no match for even a beat up AK-47, but you do what you can.

No TSA agent has taken anything of mine yet while travelling, and I've done my share. I have lost some things to customs agents in other countries. Like someone else said, you learn to expect this. You are not going to argue for long with a guy with a Baretta and a badge in Turkey, or Kuwait, or Yemen....

Does that work?
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The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
-- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)