The scanners are not useless. Lost in all this artificial hand wringing
and hysterical wailing is that the TSA screening measures have made
the terrorists resort to using PETN.
PETN is what was carried by the underwear and shoe bombers since
other stuff IS detected but petn cannot be ignited in the way they
tried to. Also the amounts were absolutely too small to do anything
even if it could have been. A pat down *definitely* would have
revealed the underwear bombers hidden explosives pack for sure.
BTW. It was the Israeli security firm ICTS Int'l, using Israeli security
practices, that let the underwear bomber slip on boards the Detroit
bound flight in Sciphol a year ago.
As for doing things the Israeli way? Sure! IF the TSA had to treat
every passenger as a potential terrorist and interview each and every
one of them before boarding AND we had a fraction of a fraction of
the airports there are in this country AND we did not have the ethnic
diversity from being a melting pot for three hundred years AND we
didn't have some serious, domestic, non MiddleEastern-looking
terrorist groups already AND we did not have the massive number
of air travelers that we do. Then we could do what Israel does.