In post-9/11 America, federal officials assured us, the most modern screening technology would be used to prevent terrorists from boarding airplanes with the intent to murder. Body-scanning machines that allow airport security personnel to detect hidden weapons or explosives under clothing were thought to be an important part of the solution.

It's a crime that it took a Christmas Day wakeup call from alleged terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab -- following in the footsteps of failed shoe bomber Richard Reid -- to fully reveal how little progress has been made in implementing effective airport security screening.

Even more troubling is the extent to which privacy activists have been able to influence the political debate and restrict the use of whole-body imaging scanners in U.S. airports. To rally the opposition, the term "virtual strip search" has been used, conjuring images of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners huddled around computers ogling the most shapely passengers.

That ridiculous scenario was too much for our elected officials, and the House overwhelming passed a nonbinding measure in June to prevent the scanners from being used for primary screening. The brainpower behind the amendment, rookie Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, referred to screened images as "TSA porn" and came up with this wonderful but ill-informed sound bite: "Nobody needs to see my wife and kids naked to secure an airplane."

Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, whose expertise in airport security might run a tad deeper than that of the freshman congressman from Utah, has a different view. In the wake of the Abdulmutallab near-miss, Chertoff told the New York Times that body-scanning machines are valuable tools that should quickly be installed in more U.S. airports.

A full eight years after Reid attempted to use the same substance as Abdulmutallab -- pentaerythritol tetranitrate, or PETN -- to blow up a plane, the TSA says there are just 40 body scanners in 19 U.S. airports. The TSA wants to have 878 units in place by 2014, but funding and political opposition could slow that already glacial timetable.

On Sunday -- after having almost two days to review the Abdulmutallab incident -- current Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano incredibly said on national TV that, "Once this incident occurred, the system worked." Space does not allow for a full listing of the many ways the homeland security system did not work in this case. It clearly failed -- as a backpedaling Napolitano admitted on Monday, most likely after a call from her boss in Hawaii -- and it was not the first time.

From the perspective of security experts, "for all intents and purposes, Northwest Flight 253 exploded in midair," Doron Bergerbest-Eilon, Israel's former senior-ranking counterterrorism officer, told the Washington Post. Just as fellow passengers thwarted Reid in 2001, it took a courageous Dutch film director named Jasper Schuringa, with an assist from other passengers and crew members, to restrain Abdulmutallab and extinguish the fire he started, saving nearly 300 lives.

Based on what we've learned about the 23-year-old Nigerian since Christmas Day, he never should have gotten as far as the security checkpoint in Amsterdam. But once he did, some of that "TSA porn" could have kept him off the plane.