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Tuesday, September 29, 2009

News What What (In the Butt)

Posted by Dan Savage on Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 2:01 PM

A bomb, that's what.


To get his bomb into this room, Abdullah Asieri, one of Saudi Arabia's most wanted men, avoided detection by two sets of airport security including metal detectors and palace security. He spent 30 hours in the close company of the prince's own secret service agents—all without anyone suspecting a thing.

How did he do it?

Taking a trick from the narcotics trade—which has long smuggled drugs in body cavities—Asieri had a pound of high explosives, plus a detonator inserted in his rectum.

The ass bomb was detonated remotely by text message. The Al Qaeda ass bomber's intended target—a Saudi Prince (wouldn't it be great if Al Qaeda only targeted Saudi princes?)—survived the attack, the ass bomber did not. But before you laugh it off:

"This is the nightmare scenario," said Chris Yates, an aviation security consultant. On a plane at altitude, the effects of such a bomb could be catastrophic. And there is no current security system that could stop it. "Absolutely nothing other than to require people to strip naked at the airport," said Yates.

And al Qaeda says it will share its new technique via the Internet very soon. There is nothing that can stop that either.

After the shoe bomber's attempt—a very nearly successful attempt—to bring down a plane over the Atlantic, we all had to start taking our shoes off at security and passing them through the metal detectors. What on earth are they going to do to us after an ass bomber brings down a passenger plane?

 

Comments (9) RSS

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1
I'm not letting some minimum wage monkey look in my asshole just so I can visit the family for Thanksgiving. Sorry, Mom.
Posted by Sock Person on September 29, 2009 at 3:28 PM · Report
2
insert joke about explosive diarrhea
Posted by Demondog on September 29, 2009 at 4:15 PM · Report
3
@ Demondog: You win comment of the year.
Posted by Joneser on September 29, 2009 at 4:39 PM · Report
4
Why couldn't security use a giant flouroscope, and have every one walk in front of it. Kinda like Total Recall. I remember when I was young, every time we got new shoes in a shoe store in Camas, we would put our feet in them and they could see if they were a correct fit. I guess it was a flouroscope, I don't really know.
Posted by ujfoyt on September 29, 2009 at 5:10 PM · Report
5
@ujfoyt: Cause they'd cause everyone that traveled frequently to get cancer.
Posted by Matthew D on September 29, 2009 at 6:05 PM · Report
6
Do flouroscopes really cause cancer? If they do, maybe they could use another form of scanning?
Posted by ujfoyt on September 30, 2009 at 8:28 AM · Report
7
@ujfoyt - Wow, yeah - I always see those shoe flouroscope things on lists of "top 10 dumb inventions!" It was an awful lot of radiation for very little benefit - this article below says that a shoe model lost a whole leg.
http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/shoefit…

We do have whole-body airport scanners that can see through your clothes, but I don't think they'd spot an assbomb. That would probably take X-rays, right? Like, a lot of them, and if you fly a lot that's too many rads. http://www.cnn.com/2008/TRAVEL/04/15/airpo…

I bet they could rig something up that you sit down on for a second, through, right?
Posted by Reymont on September 30, 2009 at 9:22 AM · Report
8
There is a gamma ray machine that is in use at some ports to scan containers for illegal contents. I wonder if something like that would work. or a hi-speed cat scan?
Posted by ujfoyt on September 30, 2009 at 9:42 AM · Report
9
Z-Backscatter? They have it in some airports, but it doesn't actually penetrate bodies.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/backscatt…
In other words, it won't find things in your rectum.
Posted by Matthew D on September 30, 2009 at 11:19 AM · Report

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