What I actually think is that the blog post left out some key details and slightly altered the "money quote" to make the story appear much more ridiculous than it really was. In reality after considering the totality of the evidence, this was a bizarre case which is way above the pay grade of the average TSA agent. They perform the smell test and this one reasonably doesn't pass.

To the point of another poster re "security theater" terrorists don't come with name cards. TSA is not supposed to just check you're not carrying any liquids. The agents need to be able to question people who trigger that gut feeling. The questioning should be professional, respectful, but curt and effective.

A guy going through airport security, recently in the middle east, not familiar with key aspects airport protocol (take out electronics, empty pockets), carrying cards with those words. Yeah, talk to him for a few minutes. I'd rather that than spending their time patting down kids and grannies.

Ideally get him through the full eval without even missing the flight. Don't handcuff a non-violent suspect, etc. The process here was imperfect but simply not as insane as the blog post made it out to be.