WASHINGTON - Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has announced plans to use spy satellites, drone aircraft, and surveillance cameras to track the movements and activities of anyone who casts a shadow.
Persons seen casting shadows at airports will also be subjected to new mandatory tertiary searches of all luggage, clothing, toiletries, and body cavities.
"Millions of Americans are afraid of their own shadows, and with good reason. Terrorists and their victims are known to cast shadows. If you see your own shadow or someone else's, danger could be imminent," Chertoff said yesterday.
Brushing aside questions about crippling flight delays and further infringements upon civil liberties, Chertoff noted, "We are at war. Everything changed on 9/11. The next shadow could be cast by the flash of a nuclear explosion.
"Defense officials have been telling us for years that if we don't fight them over there, we'll have to fight them over here.
"The opposite is also true. If we don't fight them over here, we'll have to fight them over there. We must fight them here and there, or we shall be forced to fight them there and here. Civil liberties are neither here nor there. So there, do you hear?
"Did I mention we are at war?" Chertoff added.
In a related development, shadow puppet expert C.D. Swann has been forced to cancel his tour of children's hospitals after Transportation Safety Authority agents refused to allow him to board a flight at Dulles International Airport earlier today.
"They told me I'm on the no-fly list," Swann related from his hotel room.
"I guess making sick and dying kids laugh is a threat to our way of life now."
