Weekend Warriors at the baggage scanner

Nothing personal, all you folks who serve in the reserves and
guard. I'm a former active duty officer and former reservist myself.
But I'm finding Dubya's plan to put
National Guard troops on guard in airports a little, well,
unnerving.

The units being deployed here in Maryland are infantry units,
with little or no training in policing or security operations.
The Maryland Guard's military police units are all currently deployed
— either at the crash site at the Pentagon, or overseas–so they're
activating the 3rd Infantry Brigade and giving them a crash course
in airport security.

And this is supposed to make us feel safer.

Somehow, the idea of a young kid with essentially just basic
training behind him plus some slapdash security training, carrying
a loaded M-16, manning the metal detector does not give me the
warm-and-fuzzies about air travel.

From the Washington
Post:

"The day after the bombing, three Saudis in their early
twenties traveled to Boston to visit their father, who was being
treated at a hospital there. Their bill at the Westin Hotel was
being paid by the fiancee of one of them — a man whose name is
similar to that of Mohamed Atta, one of the hijackers. After a
hotel clerk tipped the FBI, agents swarmed the hotel.

"An agent saw one of the women outside her room and pointed
a gun at her, according to the family's attorney, Jonathan Shapiro.
She tried to run away but he grabbed her and hit her across the
mouth, he said.

"The three were released after five hours, and the Saudi
Embassy called it a 'humiliation.'"