July 9, 2013, - 5:18 pm
Your Day in TSA BS: Wounded Marine Ordered to Remove Uniform b/c “Too Much Metal;” “Arm Doesn’t Work” But Ordered to Put Hands Above Head; “Treated Like a Terrorist”
Do you think America’s skies are that much safer and freer from terrorist attack because wounded retired Marine Cpl. Nathan Kemnitz was molested and ordered to remove his uniform because there was “too much metal”? Well, the TSA safety theater actors who work at Sacramento International Airport apparently think so. Meanwhile, Mohammed and Hamida just walk on by . . . laughing all the way to 72-revirginized paradise.
Ret. Marine Cpl. Nathan Kemnitz Gets Dishonored, Disrespected, and Dissed by the TSA
More:
Wearing the uniform of the Few and Proud doesn’t rate preferential treatment from the Transportation Security Administration or California capitol security officers, retired Marine Cpl. Nathan Kemnitz recently found.
Kemnitz, severely injured in 2004 in a roadside bomb attack in Fallujah, has limited use of his right arm and cannot lift it above his head. So when security guards at the state capitol building in Sacramento, Calif., asked him to remove his dress blue blouse “because he was wearing too much metal,” and TSA asked him to raise his arms above his head for the full-body scanner at Sacramento International Airport, he could not comply. “My right arm doesn’t work. It’s a lot of hassle for me to do that,” Kemnitz said.
At the state capitol, the Marine’s refusal to remove his uniform top grew into a heated exchange between Kemnitz, a friend who was accompanying him and security officers. At the airport, bystanders stared as the TSA security screener looked under Kemnitz’s medals, ran his hands under the Marine’s waistband and swabbed his shoes for explosives.
“What does a uniform and heroism represent if our own citizens — in this case employees of the TSA and security personnel — have no regard for them?” wrote Kemnitz’s escort, Patricia Martin, to Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki following the incidents.
Martin took photos and disseminated them to family, friends and members of the media. “I feel so strongly that you need to know just how shamefully even a Purple Heart recipient/disabled veteran can be treated by some TSA and security employees,” she said. Kemnitz said after the incidents that he was not as annoyed with TSA officers as he was with a security screener at the California state capitol, whom he described as rude and unapologetic.
Kemnitz was visiting the building to be honored as his legislative district’s veteran of the year. “At some places I’m treated like royalty and at some like a terrorist. There’s got to be something in the middle,” he said.
The incident was not the first to spark similar outrage. In January, NBC journalist Luke Russert tweeted his irritation at an enhanced security screening at Reagan National Airport of a troop wearing a prosthetic. “Making Wounded Warriors with prosthetic legs go through extra explosives screening. #fail,” Russert wrote. In March, bystanders notified Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., about what they perceived to be maltreatment of a double amputee by TSA screeners at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport. . . . To receive the expedited service, TSA asks affected personnel to call the agency’s Military Severely Injured Joint Service Operations Center before traveling.
I understand the extra security ONLY if there is any doubt that these are actual military veterans (because Muslims can obtain military garb to try to evade screening if the process had that hole in it–and we know that several Muslims who are not military vets have been found with fake military uniforms and IDs). But this is ridiculous, and the TSA should have some decency, common sense, and discretion and use it in cases like this. It’s not like this guy is gonna blow the airport up with his medals and his injured arm that doesn’t work. Helloooooo . . . ? And, if we’re not gonna profile Muslims, there is absolutely no point to screening anyone and everyone, including and especially men like this who served and sacrificed for America.
It’s just, as I said, security theater. No security in reality. We are LESS secure as a nation than we were on 9/10/01.
To review:
Also not making us safer . . .
* Groping Donald Rumsfeld; and
As I always say: TSA = Tough S–t, America.
Remember, this is the TSA that misses 75% of the bombs that go through. In school, that was an “F.” In real life, it’s certain death.
Tags: Eric Shinseki, Fallujah, Marine Cpl. Nathan Kemnitz, Nathan Kemnitz, Patricia Martin, Sacramento International Airport, security theater, Transportation Security Admnistration, TSA, TSA security theater
This one’s a shocker. There’ve been a few like it.
The only part you left out Debbie was how this kind of thing happened to wounded veterans all the time under Bush.
I don’t feel a story on an agency like the TSA is complete unless you’ve slammed Bush just a little.
Other than that great reporting.
Moron boy on July 9, 2013 at 5:46 pm