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Sun 8 May, 2005 08:29 am
How effective has and is homeland security in protecting the US against terrorism. What have it's sucesses/failures been? What do you think needs be done to make it more effective?
U.S. to Spend Billions More to Alter Security Systems
Quote:
By ERIC LIPTON
Published: May 8, 2005
WASHINGTON, May 7 - After spending more than $4.5 billion on screening devices to monitor the nation's ports, borders, airports, mail and air, the federal government is moving to replace or alter much of the antiterrorism equipment, concluding that it is ineffective, unreliable or too expensive to operate.
Many of the monitoring tools - intended to detect guns, explosives, and nuclear and biological weapons - were bought during the blitz in security spending after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
In its effort to create a virtual shield around America, the Department of Homeland Security now plans to spend billions of dollars more. Although some changes are being made because of technology that has emerged in the last couple of years, many of them are planned because devices currently in use have done little to improve the nation's security, according to a review of agency documents and interviews with federal officials and outside experts.
"Everyone was standing in line with their silver bullets to make us more secure after Sept. 11," said Randall J. Larsen, a retired Air Force colonel and former government adviser on scientific issues. "We bought a lot of stuff off the shelf that wasn't effective."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/national/08screen.html?th&emc=th
I posted this in November, re: Homeland Security's shortcomings......
Quote:Here are some numbers on the fight overseas, vs the "fight" on American soil:
*Basic security upgrades for subway and commuter trains in large cities: $6billion dollars, or roughly the cost of 20 days in Iraq.
-Bush bugeted only $100 million, or 8 Iraq-hours.
*To equip airports with machines that screen baggage for explosives would cost $2 billion, or roughly 10 Iraq-days.
-Bush bugeted only $400 million or 32 Iraq-hours.
*Amount needed for security upgrades at 361 US ports is $1.1 Billion, or 4 Iraq-days.
-Bush bugeted $210 million, or 17 Iraq-hours.
*Cost of radiation portals to detect "dirty bombs" at US ports: $290 million, or 23 Iraq-hours.
-Bush allocated $43 million, or 3 Iraq-hours.
*To meet the needs of firefighters prepare for future terrorist attacks: $36.8 billion, or 122 Iraq-days.
-Bush has allocated $500 million, or 40 Iraq-hours.
*To train and prepare emergency response teams and medical crews for future/potential terrorist attacks would be $1.4 billio, or 5 Iraq-days.
-Bush previously allocated $50 million to this before ultimately eliminating the program altogether.
Sources: American Public Transportation Association, FY 2005 buget, Government Accountability Office, Council on Foreign relations, US Coast Guard, house Appropriations Committee.
Thread can be found
here.
There has been as much spending on irrelevant crap as there was in the environmental toxics scares of the late 70s. Consultants are making a fortune doing mostly bogus "studies" on how water supplies and tunnels and RRcars and freighters can be made safer.
Most of the consultants have only had a single contract effort under their belts and were suddenly "national experts" . There is more marketing than real substance out there.
Then the consultants go out and hire a bunch of CIA and FBI analysts . All the while theyshould have known that they are hiring the very people who missed the original signals leading up to 9/11
Useless waste of taxpayer dollars.
Echo Farmerman.
Unless we put the US inside a "bubble", throw out all illegals, we can never be 100% safe.
woiyo wrote:Useless waste of taxpayer dollars.
Echo Farmerman.
Unless we put the US inside a "bubble", throw out all illegals, we can never be 100% safe.
We can never be 100% safe if we choose a free society. Period. I agree with Farmerman as well.
I would rather live in a free society and be standing next to a suitcase bomb when it goes off than trade my liberty and personal freedoms just to stay alive a little longer.
My first choice of course would be to strike a mature and reasonable balance between living in an open society and taking REAL and prudent precautions to protect it. Mature and reasonsable......riiiiightttt..... :wink:
"My first choice of course would be to strike a mature and reasonable balance between living in an open society and taking REAL and prudent precautions to protect it. Mature and reasonsable"
Do you mean such things like
1. Having the NAtional Guard actually GUARD THE NATIONS boarders?
2. Actually enforcing current immigration laws and detaining any and all illegals?
Things like the above which we are doing everything else but the above???
I am sure there are more, but those 2 just jump off the page as no brainers. (which you will argue is why I came up with them!)
Homeland Security is a boondoggle and is, among other unintended consequences, helping to kill the airline industry. Case in point:
Last summer I had to fly from here to Long Island. At the last minute, my airline, US Air (already teetering on bankrupcy), changed my flight. That final flight was cancelled, forcing me to scramble to get another flight the next morning. To add insult to injury, my ticket now looked somehow suspicious because of the change.
Everytime I tried to board a US Air flight, I was taken aside for special scrutiny. Will I ever fly US Air again? No way. This is Homeland Security in action...
woiyo wrote:"My first choice of course would be to strike a mature and reasonable balance between living in an open society and taking REAL and prudent precautions to protect it. Mature and reasonsable"
Do you mean such things like
1. Having the NAtional Guard actually GUARD THE NATIONS boarders?
2. Actually enforcing current immigration laws and detaining any and all illegals?
Things like the above which we are doing everything else but the above???
I am sure there are more, but those 2 just jump off the page as no brainers. (which you will argue is why I came up with them!)
actually woiyo even though I'm supposed to be a major liberal I agree with you about illegals. They don't need to be here, and we need to do a better job of screening and protecting our borders.
There is nothing wrong with being a country that welcomes immigrants and believes in granting them access to a better life and a free society while at the same time taking care of those who are already here, and setting rules for sharing in the benefits of a free society.
To me that is a no brainer.
Opportunity, responsibility and accountability should be able to coexist with one another IMO.
Editorial: An Insecure Nation
Chemical Time Bombs
Published: May 10, 2005
A small stretch of northern New Jersey running between Newark Airport and Port Elizabeth has been called the most dangerous two miles in America by terrorism experts, and for good reason. It holds a chlorine plant that could threaten some 12 million people, and it has more than a dozen other chemical plants, two port complexes and a plethora of oil storage tanks, refineries and pipelines, intermingled with rail and highway links that provide easy access to more than 100 potential targets in all.
Federal, state and local officials have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into this lethal landscape to erect gates, roadblocks and security cameras and beef up patrols and surveillance. Yet as an article in Monday's Times by David Kocieniewski makes clear, the area remains frighteningly vulnerable. At the chlorine plant, trucks and cars drive by a scant 100 feet from storage tanks. A Times reporter and photographer found the plant only loosely guarded as they drove back and forth for five minutes snapping photos.
Their experience echoed an incident last year when Senator Jon Corzine, a New Jersey Democrat, went with a "60 Minutes" crew to a chemical plant outside Pittsburgh. They had no trouble entering and gaining access to deadly chemicals like anhydrous ammonia and boron trifluoride. This sort of lax security is all too common, and it makes these plants inviting terrorist targets. The Environmental Protection Agency has identified 123 chemical plants in 24 states where a terrorist act or accident could threaten a million or more people. Yet shockingly little has been done to upgrade their defenses.
Senator Corzine's persistent efforts to upgrade chemical plant security have been thwarted by the chemical industry and by the Bush administration's lack of support. He is now working on a new bill, in collaboration with Senators Susan Collins and Joseph Lieberman, that is likely to make some concessions to the chemical industry to improve its chances of passage. If Congress and the White House are serious about protecting the nation, they will make sure that his bill becomes law in the strongest possible form. There is an urgent need for greater security at the plant sites. The industry should also be required to replace dangerous chemicals with safer alternatives. These steps may sound like common sense, but they have run into entrenched political opposition. The Bush administration's antiregulatory philosophy makes it reluctant to impose rules on private industry. And the chemical industry, a major campaign donor, seems intent on not spending the money that a strong safety law would cost it. Christie Whitman, the former E.P.A. administrator, became so frustrated by her inability to make any progress that she asked to be relieved of responsibility for chemical plant safety.
There may be room for compromise in a new bill. Plants in low-population areas might be exempted from the need to replace dangerous chemicals with substitutes that would be safer but more costly. The industry might also be granted leeway to develop its own safety codes. But unless those rules are tougher than the government's would be, they should not be a substitute.
Chemical plant safety has had a troubled history, but there is reason for cautious optimism. In the Senate, jurisdiction has shifted to the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, where the chairwoman, Senator Collins, a Maine Republican, seems serious about getting a good bill passed. Michael Chertoff, the new homeland security secretary, also appears committed to making chemical plants safer. There are few steps the government could take that would do more to protect Americans.
woiyo wrote:"My first choice of course would be to strike a mature and reasonable balance between living in an open society and taking REAL and prudent precautions to protect it. Mature and reasonsable"
Do you mean such things like
1. Having the NAtional Guard actually GUARD THE NATIONS boarders?
2. Actually enforcing current immigration laws and detaining any and all illegals?
Things like the above which we are doing everything else but the above???
I am sure there are more, but those 2 just jump off the page as no brainers. (which you will argue is why I came up with them!)
You sound a bit paranoid about illegals, and by my limited knowledge, seem to be confusing the threat of illegal immigrants on American soil with the threat of terrorism on American soil.
IMO, terrorists come to the US to **** you up, illegal aliens come to escape the fucked-up-ted-ness of their homeland to pursue freedom and the American Dream.
Maybe I'm simple and idealistic, or just misinformed...but how many illegals have blown up buildings, made car bombs, set off biological weapons or strapped a bomb to themselves and ran into a bank?
I think immigration and terrorism have a connection, but not in the way you are here connecting them.
candidone1
I would ask one question. What is to stop a terrorist or terrorists from entering along with the thousands of illegal aliens "invading" this nation?
What is to stop a terrorist from obtaining citizenship, travel, or work visas to the US?
Clearly, wondering through the desert up form Mexico hasn't been the best kept secret of the permeable American-Mexican barrier, and I would ask for some evidence beyond a mere hypothetsis indicating that terrorists have been, or are willing to exploit this avenue.
Clearly, and I believe history has clearly supported this, terrorists prefer a more direct route into the US.
candidone1
The direct route is becoming harder to negociate. The US has put controls on who comes into the US legally. And left the door wide open for illegal entry.
They locked the doors and left all the windows open.
Some may have seen this post in the humor section:
here's a couple companies that have alot of the think tank people
Science Applications International Corp. SAIC
Computer Sciences Corp.
Anteon International Corp.
CACI International Inc.
Harris Corp.
SI International Inc.
candidone1 wrote:woiyo wrote:"My first choice of course would be to strike a mature and reasonable balance between living in an open society and taking REAL and prudent precautions to protect it. Mature and reasonsable"
Do you mean such things like
1. Having the NAtional Guard actually GUARD THE NATIONS boarders?
2. Actually enforcing current immigration laws and detaining any and all illegals?
Things like the above which we are doing everything else but the above???
I am sure there are more, but those 2 just jump off the page as no brainers. (which you will argue is why I came up with them!)
You sound a bit paranoid about illegals, and by my limited knowledge, seem to be confusing the threat of illegal immigrants on American soil with the threat of terrorism on American soil.
IMO, terrorists come to the US to **** you up, illegal aliens come to escape the ****-up-ted-ness of their homeland to pursue freedom and the American Dream.
Maybe I'm simple and idealistic, or just misinformed...but how many illegals have blown up buildings, made car bombs, set off biological weapons or strapped a bomb to themselves and ran into a bank?
I think immigration and terrorism have a connection, but not in the way you are here connecting them.
Yes, you are naive.
Approx 14 Illegals blew up the WTC in 2001. Illegals tried it earlier at the WTC in the '90's. Those are the 2 obvious ones. The next attack in this country will surely be by illegals who will perform the remaining tasks you mention in your post.
Asidfe from the terror aspect of illegals, how do you feel about paying for the health care of illegals? Our wonderful Gov't just passed legislation to do just that.
Not paranoid, just realistic.
Since people are actively trying to kill us, homeland security is appropriate, questions of the current regime's efficiency aside. However, homeland security alone will never be sufficient to stop terrorism. In order for purely defensive measures to work by themselves, you would need to protect every conceivable target, against every conceivable form of attack, 24 x 7. What are they doing to stop the bombing of malls and movie theaters, the contamination of municipal water supplies, the contamination of food? For every form of attack that is protected against, there are many remaining. That is why you sometimes need to go to the people who are planning to kill you and kill them first.
That doesn't work either, though, Brandon, because it's not like we can find some country full of people and attack it.
We have to be careful about not creating more terrorists than we kill by our rash actions.
It's like cops trying to control a crowd. One or two people out of the 100 are anti-cop and will be hurling invective and sometimes rocks, etc... the police have to be very very careful to deal with those breaking the law, without creating the appearance of indiscrimination; which would set off many, many more who are already in the crowd, yet not angry enough to actually throw rocks, etc.
We need to procede with great caution.
My question is, are we doing ANYTHING on defense? It doesn't seem like it.
Cycloptichorn
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