Okay guys, when we said “a war against every country that supports terrorism” we didn’t really mean to include the United States, did we? (albeit history will attest that it qualifies).

If you don’t believe that airport security is getting a little out of hand, and quickly (although I personally have had nothing but easy going experiences myself even as recently as yesterday), read Homeland Insecurity : A Sacramento journalist is taken into custody by police and forced to destroy photos by an over-zealous National Guardsman. Apparently, the terrorists are indeed causing instability, by R.V. Scheide.

It was 5:15 pm on Wednesday, October 12, and we had call to be apprehensive. The previous day, the FBI had placed the entire nation on high alert, based on “credible” information that Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization headed by Osama bin Laden, was planning reprisal attacks on U.S. soil for the coming weekend. The bureau urged Americans to report any suspicious activity. Friday morning, armed troops from the California National Guard were deployed at Sacramento International Airport.

America, as we’ve been told over and over since September 11, is forever changed. Nowhere is this change more evident than in our approach to national security. Practically overnight, major metropolitan airports across the country have been turned into militarized zones crawling with armed soldiers and police. Their presence is designed to deter terrorists and provide us with a sense of security, but as I was about to discover, that security has come at a high price.

I’d purchased a roundtrip ticket from Sacramento International to LAX to observe firsthand the unprecedented measures being taken to combat terrorism. There’d been more than a little fear and paranoia in Sacramento and I expected to find more of the same in Los Angeles.

I didn’t expect to be ordered to destroy photographs by an irate National Guardsman. I didn’t expect the Los Angeles Police Department to confiscate and read the notes I’d taken on my trip. I didn’t expect to be questioned by the FBI and detained for nearly three hours for no probable cause.

I didn’t expect any of these things, but that’s what happened. As I followed my fellow passengers up the jetway and into the LAX terminal, I had no idea I was stepping onto the War on Terrorism’s first domestic battlefield, where, as in all wars, truth was about to become the first casualty.