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Where are they? Where are the big, nasty, evildoing terrorists that have been captured thanks to the passage of the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, the Protect America Act and then the FISA Amendments Act? Each of these bills restricting our freedoms was passed with the promise that in exchange for surrendered freedoms, your government would be catching terrorists by the bushel.

So where are they? I’m not talking about the occasional straggling loser without skills or contacts who gets 10 years in prison for talking about how easy it would be to blow something up some day over coffee at some local Starbucks. Most of these were apprehended before the passage of the above laws, anyway. I’m talking about actual, real terrorists with the weapons and the wherewithal. Where are these big, bad terrorists that are not going to talk over coffee but rather kill, kill, kill us all? When were they apprehended? Where are they being held? What are their weapons?

I’ll tell you what the U.S. government has managed to nab thanks to all this hype. The U.S. government has used millions of dollars in counter-terrorism funds to outfit aircraft for senior military and civilian leaders with plush luxurious encapsulated accommodations, complete with stuffed rotating armchairs, polished hardwood desks, big screen TVs, high-fidelity sound systems, beds and full length mirrors — “aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule.” The luxury capsules don’t provide any new tactical or communications capability to the politicians or generals who will ride in them — they’re just designed to make our leaders feel special. The Air Force general in charge of the money and the effort decided that it was time that people like him and his boss in the White House had something better than business class, something that leaders like him deserved.

That’s what this “anti-terrorism” effort has gotten us: No actual terrorists. Luxury aircraft accommodations for political and military leadership.

We need a new acronym for this kind of arrangement. If it were up to me, I’d call it a Special Category Absconsion Mess.