The Booman wrote on April 30:
… Let me clear something up for the brain-dead. You can save all our money that you are using to educate people about homeland security by adopting a foreign policy more akin to Canada, Germany, Norway, Japan, or New Zealand.
Today we learn that the Dept. of Homeland Insecurity has blown $4.5 billion on monitoring tools bought in a frenzy “during the blitz in security spending after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”
“Everyone was standing in line with their silver bullets … We bought a lot of stuff off the shelf that wasn’t effective,” a security analyust told The New York Times.
What did you just say? Wasn’t effective? Understatement of the f–king century! I’m holding my sides! And you’ll see why below the fold.
This mad frenzy not only cost us $4.5 billion, it gave us these insane problems:
- Radiation monitors at ports and borders that cannot differentiate between radiation emitted by a nuclear bomb and naturally occurring radiation from everyday material like cat litter or ceramic tile.
- Air-monitoring equipment in major cities that is only marginally effective because not enough detectors were deployed and were sometimes not properly calibrated or installed. They also do not produce results for up to 36 hours – long after a biological attack would potentially infect thousands of people.
- Passenger-screening equipment at airports that auditors have found is no more likely than before federal screeners took over to detect whether someone is trying to carry a weapon or a bomb aboard a plane.
- Postal Service machines that test only a small percentage of mail and look for anthrax but no other biological agents.
Radiation-monitors-at-ports-and-borders
that-cannot-differentiate-between
radiation-emitted-by-a-nuclear-bomb
and … CAT LITTER!
Alarms occurred so frequently when the monitors were first installed that customs officials turned down their sensitivity. But that increased the risk that a real threat, like the highly enriched uranium used in nuclear bombs, could go undetected because it emits only a small amount of radiation or perhaps none if it is intentionally shielded.
“It was certainly a compromise in terms of absolute capacity to detect threats,” said Mr. Milowic, the customs official.
The port’s follow-up system, handheld devices that are supposed to determine what set off an alarm, is also seriously flawed. Tests conducted in 2003 by Los Alamos National Laboratory found that the handheld machines, designed to be used in labs, produced a false positive or a false negative more than half the time. The machines were the least reliable in identifying the most dangerous materials, the tests showed.
The weaknesses of the devices were apparent in Newark one recent morning. A truck, whose records said it was carrying brakes from Germany, triggered the portal alarm, but the backup device could not identify the radiation source. Without being inspected, the truck was sent on its way to Ohio.
“We agree it is not perfect,” said Rich O’Brien, a customs supervisor in Newark. But he said his agency needed to move urgently to improve security after the 2001 attacks. “The politics stare you in the face, and you got to put something out there.”
Agree it’s not perfect? So do we. But, hell, if there’s a perceived problem, why not throw money at it instead of stopping, pausing, and figuring out the most sane way — Booman’s way — of solving the damn problem:
This makes my head hurt.
Read the entire article at The New York Times.
So the Dept of Homeland inSecurity went a little menstrual and got busy with the credit card.
Would someone get these assholes a huge bag of bbq potato chips? Always helps me when I’m a bit bloated and stressed out and just not able to make reasonable and rational decisions. (sarcasm)
Cripes 4.5 billions down the shitter.
Well we all knew it was just smoke and mirrors anyways.
But… DAMN! My expensive mistake was buying some Ninas. Italian Pointy toed, high-heeled hoity toity shoes from Macy’s no less) when I got into a marital bliss-blast.
Please note: I’m not usually that type of shop therapy kinda of “chick”. I’d never even been in Macy’s before. ACK!
The worst crime against humanity… okay well against the Mister Damnit… was when I was blind rage livid and I … I took it out on some of those ancient things called “records”. LPs. I know!!! I’ve made my amends. It was horrid.
Wouldn’t things be so much better for so many if politicans stepped down and let Mothers and Children run things for a bit.(?) Worst case scenario is some albums might get thrown and some bad food decisions might be made during hard times.
Much better than Wars and 4.5 billion dollar boo boos. YIKES
Thanks Susan!
hey susan, when I read this article this morning my first thought was how many contracts went to FOB..that’s not friends of bill but friends of bush, as some per usual were of the no bid contract kind.
Add this to the 170 million that the FBI gave some company to give the bureau a new computer system after 9/11..as some places in FBI couldn’t even do inter-office memo’s on their computers the system was so old and screwed up. And guess what? It now turns out that the new 170 million dollar system doesn’t work at all and they are back to square one there…can we start saying war profiteering in loud voices yet?
This administration has used the taxpayers money like their own ATM machine for friends, relatives but even that wouldn’t be quite so bad if anything they did actually worked and produced results.
whether Osama ever had any plans for another attack. He might be just laughing his ass off watching Bush bag our economy and throw it in the dumpster.
The wasted $4.5 billion is criminal, but we’re spending that much every month to kill and be killed in Iraq on the premise that “it’s better to fight them over there than to fight them here”.
The damage done on 9/11/01 might be far exceeded by the President’s moronic reaction to it.
I’m sorry to say I worked with these clowns at DHS in my previous life. It was an utter joke, albeit an extremely painful one.
Although I spent more time in the planning side of things than the purchasing side, I can tell you that the quote above from Cox is right on the money. Everyone from the Feebers to Deputy Dawg in rural Arkansas got a large chunk of cash and went nuts buying all kinds of weird, mismatched things that didn’t mesh with what the next county/state over had. And a whole industry of supplying expensive DHS stuff mushroomed… you should see the catalogs, they would blow your mind.
Here are a few items I’ve seen for sale in them, with prices approximate from my memory:
etc etc