When you’re an al-Qaeda brand POW, you’re expected to give more than the Geneva Conventions’ name, rank and serial number. From Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, US interrogators want to know the who, what and where about the explosives party in his pants but forget HOW the Christmas concoction was supposed to formulate itself into a terrorist attack. Should Americans be assured with the news today that “Abdulmutallab is cooperating with US intelligence?” His captors going back and forth about whether a pantie bomber is entitled to US civil rights sound like coercion of an American citizen to me. On top of the torture.

By all means tell them how you came to wrap yourself in C-4 plastique, more than likely you had a point to make, you might as well express it now. How sad that the American public has forgotten it is entitled to the freedom not to explain.

I went to a baby shower once where guests has to smell diapers filled with melted candy bars, the object being to differentiate one from the other, the gag being that the scenario looked like we were sniffing poo. It’s not a task I would entrust with the TSA. The American public should make their media talking heads do this when another diaper bomber comes up the gangway. Ants in the pants do not constitute an ant army invasion. Loose gunpowder does not a firecracker make. Explosives with no means of detonation do not make a bomber, a bullet in the hand is not worth a gunman.