Collateral damage is damage that is unintended or incidental to the intended outcome. The term originated in the United States Military, but it has since expanded into broader use.

To the terrorists, I am not collateral damage:  I am the target. But to my Government and foreign Governments, this is what I've been reduced to.

I am racially profiled by terrorists every day: American. Christian. Western Woman. Infidel. If there is a way to blow up my airplane or my mall or my towers, it will be attempted. Sometimes it will succeed.

"The system worked," Napolitano had the nerve to say. Well yes, it worked for the terrorists.

Flight 253 recently taught us multitudinous lessons, not the least of which is that very little has changed since September 11, 2001.  Security is terrible. Nobody is sharing information with anybody in any meaningful way. It takes an Amsterdam film maker who is a passenger to jump the terrorist trying to blow up the airplane, just like it took the brave Americans who brought down United Airlines Flight 93. That flight was headed for the White House or the U.S. Capitol; the passengers chose to die fighting rather than let the terrorists win that day.

You are collateral damage.

By all accounts, and after everything we know, the Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab never should have been allowed on that airplane.

• He had no passport.
• His own father had warned authorities he was a terrorist and a security risk.
• He had no money.
• He had no reason to be flying to Detroit, Michigan.
• He had received training and instructions from al-Qaida in Yemen.

The hijacking of Flight 93 on September 11th was led by Ziad Jarrah, a member of Al-Qaeda. The only difference between he and Abdulmutallab is that he had a passport and he succeeded in his terrorist act.

Abdulmutallabs' attempt to blow up the airplane [which would have become another 911 under President Obama], which could have killed thousands had it succeeded and blown up as it descended upon Detroit, serves another purpose. It's called a Practice Run. Trial Run. Test Run. Dry Run. Terrorists use the information gleaned from Practice Runs to sharpen their tactics, fix some mistakes, plug any gaps.

Actor James Woods was on a flight from Boston to Los Angeles a month before the 911 hijackings during a dry run. It scared the living crap out of him. He did all the right things. He reported it to authorities and a flight attendant but they seemed unwilling to become involved. A month later, these same men helped kill 2,819 Americans when they slammed into the World Trade Center.

News reports indicate that at least some of the 19 hijackers made "dry runs" several weeks in advance, taking trips on cross-country flights headed for S.F., L.A. and San Diego from east coast departure points such as Boston's Logan Airport.

The Imams out of Michigan in 2006 performed a practice run and managed to scare everybody before the plane ever left the ground. Even before the airplane took off, both passengers and crew members became alarmed at their suspicious behavior so much so that the airport police and Federal Air Marshall asked the men to leave the plane. The suspicious behavior included:

• The Imams refusing to sit in their assigned seats.
• Requesting seatbelt extensions, even though according to flight crew they didn't need them and indeed placed them on the cabin floor instead of lengthening their seatbelts with them.
• 3 traveled without any checked baggage and on one-way tickets.
• Spoke only in Arabic to each other but were listened to by a passenger who also spoke Arabic who called what they were talking about suspicious.

They filed a lawsuit for being discriminated against and eventually won.

A Northwest flight in 2004 involved 14 Syrian men who were also eventually released even though passengers, Air Marshalls and crew members again became extremely alarmed. Their actions were so obvious that several passengers became distraught, with grown women crying. Pilots for both Northwest Airlines and American say there is "widespread knowledge" among crew members that these probes are taking place. One event documented on the Northwest flight was the rushing of the cockpit and stopping suddenly to try and flush out the Air Marshalls. The Syrians were taken into custody and released after their information and fingerprints were added to a database.

Each time a terrorist makes it onto an airplane, it gives more information to the terrorists on how to sneak somebody on, in plain sight; how to blow it up, how to take down "hero's" before they can stop you.

Every time a terrorist makes it onto an airplane, another one of my conveniences is taken away. Box cutters and plastic knives are now weapons. Taking off shoes at the airport is mandatory. Bottles of water are dumped before I can drink them while going through security. Now they are talking about not allowing passengers to get up during the final hour of an international flight. Make the good citizens cower and grovel, lift shirts and open briefcases and keep allowing the bad guys on board. Don't profile them but keep checking my trunk at the airport. Now will they ask us all to take off our underwear before boarding the plane?

This was a sophisticated enough terrorist attempt that Abdulmutallab got exactly the seat he wanted, which would allow the most damage if he had succeeded in his attempt to blow up Flight 253. He boarded without a passport! When was the last time somebody waived you through when you said you didn't have a passport on an International flight?

I thought so.

Lawyer, passenger on Flight 253 and witness, Kurt Haskell, has this story to tell. He and his wife live in Taylor, Michigan.

While waiting in the holding area in the Amsterdam airport, in a room designated for only the passengers of Flight 253, Haskell saw a well dressed man of apparent Indian descent accompany a young, poorly attired man of African descent to the boarding gate. He said the Indian man appeared to have no accent.

The well dressed man told the ticket agent that the young man had to get on the flight even though he had no passport. She told him he must have a passport in order to board. The man insisted that this happens all of the time, these guys get on flights without passportss all the time, so she sent him off to talk to management. That was the last time Mr. Haskell saw the Indian man and it was the last time he saw the African man, until later in the day when he tried to blow up the plane.

Did the well dressed man bribe Airport management to allow the terrorist onto the airplane? The FBI has twice interviewed Kurt Haskell and his wife. Kurt was one of the passengers who jumped up and ran to row 19 when he saw flames shoot up as their plane descended into Detroit. They have the ticket agent as a witness, they have the film of the man and the terrorist at the desk, but have yet to release it, to help identify the accomplice. Yet as of Tuesday January 5th Dutch investigators are claiming they have found no evidence of accomplices.

Under the category of looks-like-about-12-days-too-late, the State Department has announced it is revoking the U.S. visa for suspected Nigerian underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Why did he have one in the first place? It is a privilege to visit the United States, not a right. He was on a terrorist watch list. Are American lives now so under-valued that we must give the benefit of the doubt to any and all who might wish us harm?

Political Islam is not a religion, it's an act of war. I guess security will only get seriously tightened when Paul Pelosi or Malia Obama or Trent Franks are on one of those airplanes that go down. But since our Washington elite do not fly commercial, that may never happen.

We are all collateral damage.