"US soldiers usually aren't terrorists"? That's a useless observation. Mathematicians usually aren't terrorists. Men usually aren't terrorists. Musicians usually aren't terrorists. What does that have to do with anything? Sheesh.
And I'm sure the 13 people killed at Ft. Hood are glad to know that you have determined that US soldiers with guns are of no danger to anybody.
You were wrong sonny, be a man and own up to it.
I'm not surprised they catch the C4 My wife frequently travels with chocolate fudge in her carry-on (she has co-workers that *really* like this one particular fudge), and unfrozen gel icepacks in checked baggage (post half-marathon icedown). Both almost always get handchecked. We know to pack both of those at the *top* of the bag for easy access.
-Jay-
TSA had no problem with Arijit and his wife, and properly passed them right through the checkpoint and on to their gate. It was an idiot Delta gate agent, most likely aided by one or more idiot Delta passengers that decided that Arijit was the wrong color errr, I mean, a threat to safety.
Thereafter, like-minded idiots where found from many different organizations (if you were there, *you* could have volunteered!), but TSA behaved professionally throughout from Arijit's description.
(Doesn't change my opinion that all full-body airport scanners are a waste of money, and xray backscatter scanners in particular should be banned.)
But the FDA is right to focus on over-prescribed medical xray procedures.
My home airport, PDX, just announced they'll be fully deploying new scanners just in time for the holiday travel season (joy), and they are mm-wave RF. The waste of time and money still pisses me off, but at least I don't have to go through the PITA of opting out for safety reasons now.
I go ahead and use the millimeter wave scanners and opt out of the backscatter x-ray scanners.
That's based not on civil liberty, but on safety. There's really not much the mm-wave scanners can do to you if they fail; the hardware just isn't there to give you the microwave popcorn treatment no matter what breaks. On the other hand, a broken backscatter x-ray scanner could hit you with an x-ray hot-spot and do serious damage.
-Jay-
A list is only as strong as its weakest link. -- Don Knuth