Last week's column endorsing the use of whole-body scanners to keep explosives off airplanes was an enlightening experience. After it was published, I learned a lot of synonyms for "idiot."

That's all right. There are consolations. Writing something a lot of people consider imbecilic could be the very best way to wangle an invitation to appear on talk radio.

My unabashed support for "virtual strip searches" of all who want to board a commercial airplane earned a ton of reader responses and two radio invitations - one from WBAL's Ron Smith and the other from WYPR's Dan Rodricks.

("Virtual strip search," by the way, is the phrase opponents have used to demonize a highly promising technology for protecting airline passengers from the type of nonmetallic explosive that was used in an al-Qaida attempt to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day. The phrase is intended to scare people and shut down critical thinking, but it's also quite accurate. I find the idea of a virtual strip search immensely preferable to the only reasonable alternative to provide meaningful protection: an actual strip search.)

Between my e-mail and callers to the two radio programs, I believe I heard every popular argument against the use of "millimeter wave" scanning of our persons. Each one held less water than the one before.

Yes, it's true that my certitude of correctness can make Rush Limbaugh look like a sniveling ditherer - or was it dithering sniveler? And that is, without doubt, annoying. But when a civil liberties champion is reduced to arguments that the government wants to look up your behind, you know it's time to do the intellectual version of an end-zone chicken dance.

(Yeah, yeah, I know that'll mean a 15-yard penalty on the kickoff.)

In a nutshell, the argument is that while whole-body scanning is recognized as highly effective in screening for suspicious packages - metallic or not - concealed beneath the clothes, it won't detect explosives hidden in places where the sun doesn't shine. Because it deals with only 95 percent of the problems, say opponents, the technology is worthless. And, besides that, it'll open the door (so to speak) for the government to tell every passenger to spread 'em before boarding.

A bully argument! But only when you ignore the facts. Explosives concealed upon the person but under the clothing is an established danger. Authorities agree that if not for the ineptitude of its would-be martyrs, al-Qaida might indeed have brought down another aircraft or two.

But what might be delicately called internal explosive devices are hardly a proven technology. Yes, there is a known instance where a terrorist is believed to have tried to carry out an assassination using explosives concealed in his rectum. The result was reportedly gory, but harmless to the intended target, as the impact was absorbed by the terrorist's body.

Until such internal devices are perfected, I think we can agree that a probe of passengers' insides would be an "unreasonable search." And if by using whole-body scanning, we block al-Qaida from achieving success with externally concealed bombs, the group will likely have to focus its R&D; efforts in a most uncomfortable manner that we can all applaud.

Another red herring came up both online and on the radio. One reader wrote: "So, who are you going to thank for all your security when you get cancer from all the X-rays you have had, plus, now all the scans you are going to have?"

I hate to dash the reader's cherished misconceptions, but the millimeter-wave technology employed in whole-body scanners such as those at BWI-Marshall Airport doesn't employ X-rays, just radio waves. It's about as dangerous as your cell phone.

Here's one vote for one of the most popular wrongheaded solutions to the security problem: "They should strip search the Middle Eastern terrorists and leave everyone else alone. Profiling is the way to go."

Wonderful idea! But tell me, how do you tell who's a Middle Eastern terrorist before you strip-search him? Or her? Do they come with bar codes? Or do we adopt the idea advanced by some cable news talking heads that we target all young Muslim men for public humiliation?

Xenophobes would surely love the strategy. But so would Osama bin Laden. Not only would it further anger the world's Muslims, it would virtually ensure that some blue-eyed, blond Swedish jihadist named Lars will breeze through security with a couple pounds of plastique in his crotch.

No, the beauty of whole-body scanning is that it can be applied to all passengers - eliminating any need to create exempt categories and targeted groups. Instead of arguing who's presumptively naughty and who's presumptively nice, we can get about the business of keeping the skies safe.