Ridge Discovers Size of Home Security Task"

Ridge Discovers Size of Home Security Task

By PHILIP SHENON

[]WASHINGTON, March 2 — Shortly after noon on Friday, Feb. 7, the nation's secretary of homeland security, Tom Ridge, announced that the nation had been placed on "high risk" of terrorist attacks. As he issued his dire warning, almost nobody in Washington knew that eight hours earlier, a team of heavily armed security agents of a hostile foreign government had landed on American soil.
Luckily, the four men were not terrorists. They were defecting Cubans, agents of the Cuban coast guard, who arrived in Key west, Fla., aboard a 30-foot government patrol boat, the Cuban flag still flapping from the mast.
Carrying two AK-47 rifles and full clips of ammunition, they docked their boat before dawn at the marina of the local Hyatt hotel, a short distance from the United States Coast Guard station. Undetected, the Cubans, still in their camouflage uniforms and black boots, marched into the middle of the sultry Florida resort town looking for someone to surrender to.

I did not know whether to laugh or cry upon reading this article. Here we are 17 months after 9/11. Troops and gobs of taxpayer money sent to Afghanistan. 200,000 troops poised to attack Iraq. Taxpayer money being spent like a drunken sailor by the emperor in Washington. Terror alerts issued on an ongoing basis. And an armed vessel can sail into harbor with impunity, and as the caption reads "Ridge Discovers Size of Home Security Task"
Do you feel safer now that the giant bureaucracy is in place?
It makes me wonder how many of these alerts are a figment of the administrations imagination. It seems to me a determined terrorist could easily slip through our antiterrorist net [also a figment of the administration imagination] and do damage. They would not need sophisticated weapons just a can of flammable liquid in a crowded subway train would do it.
Again do you feel safer today than you did yesterday now that Ridge is in charge? http://www.nytimes.com/ads/amex_popunder10103.html