Are there 1 million terrorists on the TSA watch list?

A watch list of suspected and known terrorists, compiled by the US authorities, has ballooned and contains more than one million names, the American Civil Liberties Union said Monday.

The ACLU said it derived that figure from a Justice Department report on the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, which consolidates terrorist watch list information.

The Center "had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007 and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month," according to a report by the Justice Department Inspector General, the rights group said.

"By those numbers, the list now has over one million names on it," the ACLU said in a statement.

Among those on the watch list are deceased people, such as former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who was hanged in 2005, decorated war veterans, and US Senator Ted Kennedy, the ACLU said.

Nobel Peace Prize winner, former South African president Nelson Mandela, was also on the list until an act of Congress removed his name -- the only way, according to the ACLU, to get off the list.

"The watchlist is a perfect symbol for what's wrong with the administration's approach to terrorism: it's unfair, out of control, incompetently administered, a waste of resources, and is a very real impediment in the lives of billions of travelers," the director of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program, Barry Steinhardt, told reporters in Washington.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) flatly denied the allegation that the list contained one million names.

"Assumptions about the list are just plain wrong," the TSA said in a posting on its website, estimating that there were less than 450,000 people on the watch list.

You know I am not sure that 450,000 terrorists is all that much better then 1,00,000 terrorists. I mean yes it is only half as many, but it means that according to the TSA there are still almost a half of a million people in the world who want to kill us. Including the always dangerous Senator Ted Kennedy, who must only be pretending to battle brain cancer to throw the TSA off his trail. The list is a joke and should be shit canned until the Obama administration takes over and someone with half a brain can put together an accurate list of scary bad guys.

On a personal note when I went to visit my sister last Christmas, which was the first time I had flown since 9-11, I half expected to be on some sort to watch list due to my constant berating of the President on this blog and in my local newspaper.

At first I was very relieved to have no problem clearing the security checkpoints but then later I was kind of let down. I know of a few outspoken critics that HAVE made the list and it pains me to know that the administration does not take my venomous criticisms to be sufficiently damaging enough to get me labeled as dangerous.

It totally screws with my self esteem.