Former USAF terror law whiz Morris Davis arrives for a Prine of Departure interview. When is it OK to kill an American without due process of law?

The smartest person you will hear from today: Yemen expert Christopher Swift talks terror, the crumbling regime in Sana’a and whether Zbigniew Brzezinski is handy with the favored blade of the blood feud.

But what Yemen underscores is that al Qaida no longer needs Afghanistan as a base of operations. It can, and does, operate from any number of countries. In this Internet age, it can be anywhere. So the massive investment in rebuilding Afghanistan provide only the same false sense of security and accomplishment, as did the Maginot line after WW1.

So here was a man who should have been on the terrorist watch list, who bought his one-way ticket for cash, and had no luggage, but yet apparently did not get any extra attention upon departing Amsterdam. Hello??? And the response is to force of passengers squirm in their seats with no access to bathroom facilities while banning their iPods? Not to mention the prospect of digital strip searches.