Here we go again. Just when you thought you’d become acclimated to one set of senseless airport security rules, here comes a whole slew of new ones.

By now, you’ve heard the story. British officials uncovered a plot to bring down multiple planes en route from London to America. Thankfully, the plot was foiled before it could be put into action. The would-be terrorists have been arrested, and bans on liquids and gels in carry-on baggage are now in place. We may never again board a plane carrying a tube of toothpaste.

I can hardly wait to get back to the airport. Not.

Don’t get me wrong. I am actually somewhat sympathetic to knee-jerk reactions when it comes to the security of American citizens—as long as those responses are temporary, either put in place to deal with a specific known threat or administered as a band-aid while appropriate permanent solutions are being considered.

Unfortunately, I see no sign that the Transportation Security Administration is considering significant changes to its new security procedures anytime in the near future.

Some of the TSA rules are flat-out absurd. For instance, you may buy liquids inside the security checkpoint, but you may not then take those liquids onto the plane. A friend of mine bought a cup of Starbucks coffee inside the airport’s "secure" zone last week, but she was forced to throw it away at the gate. With all due respect, this is plain crazy. If the so-called secure zone inside the airport is so insecure as to allow travelers to sneak dangerous items into their Starbucks cups, then we have much bigger problems than what may or may not be in someone’s cup of coffee.

Even as some travelers are forced to throw away their Starbucks at the gate, others are legally traveling with pointed scissors (under 4 inches), corkscrews, screwdrivers (under 7 inches), and knitting needles. Hair gel is prohibited, but feel free to wear a gel-filled bra aboard the plane. A small container of Blistex or a travel tube of toothpaste is banned, but "personal lubricants" are allowed.

No one should be expected to survive more than a few hours without their K-Y Jelly, after all.

But, of course, even if K-Y Jelly, screwdrivers, corkscrews, and scissors are banned along with our cups of coffee, those who wish to do us harm will simply seek other ways to sabotage planes. They will change tactics, perhaps relying upon sabotaged computers and iPods instead. Maybe they will begin hiding tiny knives inside fake credit cards or in the lining of their wallets. Mechanical pencils can be used with as much lethal effect as a knife, by one who knows what he is doing. Will the TSA ban pencils and pens, too? Indeed, in their persistent attempts to find anything that can possibly be used as a weapon, at what point will TSA officials cease to take items away from us? Will we eventually board airplanes stripped of everything but a paper hospital gown?

Last week, Rafi Ron, Former Chief of Security for the Israeli Airport Authority, made a similar point. The problem, he noted on Fox News Sunday, is that the TSA is looking for weapons, when it should be looking for the terrorists themselves. "[I]n order to find the weapon," he told Fox host Chris Wallace, "you need to invest tremendous amount of resources both in terms of time as well as in other terms, which is impossible to do for 100 percent of the passengers." Much more effective, he concluded, is "to develop a tool that will allow you to focus on a very small number of people that you want to spend a lot of time [with] before you allow them to fly."

In short, even innocent items can be used for nefarious purposes, so the search for a weapon is inevitably endless—and imperfect. Worse, the floundering searches not only fail to make us safe, but they actively harm us because security officials are distracted from more productive endeavors.

If airline security officials were trained to identify suspicious passengers or bags, then such efforts would be far more useful than making sure that every last bottle of shampoo is confiscated. Perhaps even more importantly, airline security officers should not be viewed as our primary defense against terrorism in the skies. To the contrary, these individuals are merely the last line of defense. The bulk of the work should be done by intelligence service agencies, which have the capability of finding the terrorists themselves, stopping them before they ever get to the airport.

Many Americans have castigated the Bush administration for implementing programs that are designed to protect us: wiretapping, the Patriot Act, and money-tracking efforts. But these and other, similar programs are the best hope of preventing another 9-11. We need to accept the fact that our government needs strong investigative tools if we are to be safe.

Moreover, every American does not need to know every detail of these top-secret programs, the claims of The New York Times notwithstanding.

The plot in London was not foiled because of effective airport security measures. Instead, it was England’s efforts to identify the terrorists themselves that successfully thwarted this tragedy in the making.

We could all learn a thing or two from this experience.

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