Homeland Security, and its many kluged parts, are a perfect example of how we misunderstand the mind of al_Quada, and the other splintered groups that George W likes to call "terrorist." First, to be sure, DHS started out well under Secretary Ridge. While I would disagree on all the elments that became DHS, at least is was a concentrated effort to plan for the unknown.

Then, along came Chertoff--the lawyer with no experience, and his horse-breeder friend. Now, we had a greatm mix--a Department with a lot of money that could go for protection of bourbon festivals, and police overtime in Iowa, and all sorts of other important items that were critically needed to stem the war on terror.

Forget Katrina--that episode should have caused sane people to demand the dissolution of the agency, and the defat of any congreessman or senator that prevented the dissolution. In this administration, and particularly atDHS, people aren't important, its the ork that goes to the states and local communites for everything but real security that is important.

Doing the research for my latest books on terrorism, it became obvious to me that terrorists look as much toward the cost of prevention as they do in actual terrorist acts. The terror cells don't have to actually Do anything, they only have to convince the government to do something, spend dollars, and mobilize resources IN CASE they might do something. That is even more effective bwecause it causes uncertainty in the populace. For DHS it also means big budgets for many pork projects.

Remember the old days of the J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI budget? Just before the budget sessions would start, the FBI would find some new major crime spree about to happen, and they would make arrests all over the country. Ever wonder what happended to those arrested? Very few ever got to trial.

Then, of course, there was the IRS. Just before the end of tax season, they would create sensational headlines--taking F. Lee Bailey's boat and plane, or some other stunt designed to instill fear in the common citizen. Just enough fear to ensure that taxes were paid.

I'm not trying to belittle terrorism. Just the opposite, in fact. The Government should be spending its money--the citizen's money--on REAL deterrance, and not pork barrel projects that defend no one.

The United States Roach Hotel,

Dr. Larry Scheikert, author of the book, American Victories, confirmed my previous conjecture, about the American post-911 strategy in Iraq. [And no matter what the President says, I have spoken with military officials who confirmed that American military personnel were dispatched to Iraq in preparation for the invasion at the same time that we sent the American Armada to Afghanistan]; they were there.

• According to Dr. Scheikert, the strategy of the U.S.A. after 911 was the same strategy that America employed in previous conflicts pre-dating 911.

• The U.S.A. military strategy was to 'turn Iraq into a huge Roach Motel'.

• America's ultimate goal was to attract all of the (terrorist) roaches including those hiding in the USA and all over the Middle-and near-East into the Iraqi Roach Motel, where they could be destroyed by American Military Forces, I'm sorry, I meant to say, 'The Coalition of the Willing'.

• According to Dr. Scheikert, the strategy has been successful so far, in that terrorists from all over the world including Al-Zaqarwi have been drawn in and destroyed. So far the number of known terrorists who have been destroyed is about 20,000.

Don't exult yet, for a reported four-thousand dead Americans, and 45,000 wounded and maimed Americans, more than the number of dead and wounded on 911 is the price that America has paid, in addition to about $300M in Iraq, so far. These Americans are being quietly shipped home on a periodic basis. The numbers since 911 have gone up, not down!

As we approach the 5-year anniversary of 911, I believe that Americans are being lulled to sleep by America's prestidigator, President Bush. For the fact is that the problem (terrorism on both sides is only a symptom of the problem) has not been addressed at all, The Administration has simply created an illusion, that many Americans have bought into, by shifting the battlefield elsewhere.

Last week Mr. Bush admitted that things are not getting better, when he had to deploy more troops to Iraq. Americans should wake up, for we have outsourced our security and future to an Administration that does not have a clue, otherwise, we will be having this same discussing on the anniversary of 911, in about 5 years from now. And how many more Americans will have been killed by then.

We are off to a bad start in the first decade of the 21st Century! By the way, do we have the right to take over someone else's country and turn it into a battlefield? And we wonder why other nations and people don't like us!

Why would this new "catch all" bunch of idiots and careless protectors of freedoms be anything else but what they are? Bush dreamed it; Cheney and Rumsfeld are in love with it and themselves. The Dept. of Homeland Security was a joke from the very moment Bush uttered the title. It's always been nothing less than a dangerous robber of American freedoms and protections from what was a 200 year old unsullied document known as our Constitution. If 2006 does not bring in smarter, more caring, more Senators and Representatives concerned about the destruction of our country itself, then I'm very sure that we will never be able to recover from the Rulers of 2000-2008. It will take decades anyway, but without those wins in just a few months, I repeat that it will never happen. The United States will be doomed. Cynic? I wish!

Thanks to the DHS my family and I sleep confortable knowing that Mr Chirtoff is watching over me and mine.

Now just because of a minor slip-up with Katrina and a little overzealous puchasing, and maybe a few accounting slip-ups is no reason to suggest dismantling the DHS. No, like our congress people, the DHS should be allowed to spend on pork and and a few earmarks to remind us that this a federal agency.

if on 9/11 if we had turned away from oil and solved the "middle east crisis," and nuetralizing US oil addiction, by finding alternatives in policy and source....

the ringing bell of freedom in the former USSR would have been real, instead of sliding back into the dark ages as our neandertalic "current administration," and complicit congress snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and move you back into the dark ages and serfdom...

ps. Capitol ONE's president won the DC area competition for "best businesses" 2 years after he moved all customer service operations to India....and cut 3,000 jobs in Fredericksburg, VA....Capitol ONE, right....rich pigge, uncaring corporation.

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I think there's something to be noticed here

"most people," tend to think in paradigms that are already existent....and not beyond that...

the world is getting smaller.

Globalization has always existed, most people are aware of trading ships that have moved around the world since the beginning of time. The Phonecians sailing in reed ships to the British Isles to trade in iron. Usually through the years there have been royal families that have held connections with other royal families that has been part of the backdrop on which trade is done....favors for favors, arrangements of forces/supplies/access/commodities, backed by families...

Right now, we have a royal family, or suite of royal families that are trying to push for world dominance and escape government notice.

There are even some countries that are willing to use their military, and intelligence operations to benefit their royals....United States of America, for the rich and crony oriented....give us your money!

That is olde stuffe...predictable even

What hasn't truly happened is a benevolent, socialistic, democratic, semi-capitalistic society emerging to work with the peoples of the world in an

ecologically sound way...

Now, mind you, ecology means on some level that all of the niches serve a particular purpose, that makes sense _FORTHESYSTEM_

not for a particular part of the ecology...not for one life form....balance is achieved by working with the system, not be skewing it...

From an engineering standpoint, we have piracy rampant within the ranks of the so-called free world...we have a lifeform out of balance, we have a tribe acting_out, that needs to be put backinto balance by arresting it...

We have the MILITARY_INDUSTRIAL_COMPLEX, a money making, money oriented portion of the extended government family, making decisions for the Executive Branch. We have an Executive Branch that is not acting in the best interests of the country that it purports to serve but acting in the best interests of the ruling families, some of whom are not even from the United States....but part of the elite life form that eats all other lifeforms...the corpuscular moneyorientedape....the jelloid, selfabsolving lifeform of greed...

We are _not_ operating as a soveriegn nation, WETHEPEOPLESOFUNITEDSTATES_are_acting as a tool of a few rich people...and not all of them citizens...

who won in Mexico? did we have a hand in that? sounds alot like 2000 and 2004 doesn't it? did we help someone out? and damage democracy.....probably

Raising the minimum wage, AND LINKING THAT RAISE FOR THE LITTLE MAN to ESTATE TAX ABOLISHMENT...... how benevolent , is that managment of resources? How benevolent is it of the congress to increase the medicare burden on fixed income peoples' by $30/month to pay for their containment of scarce resources....military for oil managmentin Iraq....reuping for the 4th time, with no choice....

Look, WE don't need oil, and are not threatened by a lack of it unless you're an oil sellor....and don't want an alternative, or alternatives to be developed because you want to make top dollar. If cars start, "running on water," as it was implied in the movie "Syriana"....the need to control or dominate the middle east ceases to exist....

you want to erase the danger from oil, a scarce resource, falling into the wrong hands....

you eliminate the need for it by reengineering the dependent society...

mandate telecommuting where applicable, mandate customer service for United States Companies to be in_country...so we can give our out of work factory workers something to do besides work at McDonalds and keep them from having to commute intown from rural homes, mandate energy changes that reduce consumption, start advertising in such a way as to skew consumption towards products that by their nature make the world a better place, organics, replacing high energy consuming products with low energy consuming products, making people that consume more than 30 gallons a week per car pay double for the excess gas....whatever...

IF WE WERE AT WAR, we would do it, and do it in such a fashion that hardships would be _fun_ and a sharing comraderie of feeling rather than fat bastids complaining about not being able to eat the baby...

This administration, as well as Exxon, BP, Chevron and whoever else is playing you, the citizens of the world and United States does not want you to see that they don't want you to discover an alternative to oil addiction....

they want to sell it to you as long as they own _ANY_ of it down to the last drop..._THAT_...._IS_ in _their _ best interests...

not yours, you should wake up and smell the coffee burning

FIND an alternative to oil, and destroy the families that are using the United States Military as their personal tool.

An Engineer, doesn't waste his or her time backing a favorite product or group, they get the job done by doing it effeciently.

You can not run a country efficiently, if you don't take into account the effect of globalization on the citizens. The current administration and congress, is only looking at globalizations impact from their personal level, which is corporate....

These pikers, are a bunch of sociopathic mommas' boyz that want to get drunk, steal, lie and mandate raises and benefits for themselves as they destroy the lives of ordinary citizens, as_a_way_of_doing_business....we don't need to take care of _these_ citizens, we gots a boatload of new ones coming across the border from Mexico....you can get to for the price of one American one...

There are ways to stop this, most of them involve telling the truth. I suggest, you the media, start doing what I _have_ been doing which is using plainspeech to address what is going on so that the average citizen can _get_it_

for example: apparently with the finding of 500 or so old chemcial warheads and using the administrations phrase, WMD's the republicans have convinced the public that WMD's did exist. Weisman, spoke of this in his Friday column.........why is that okay? Keep people informed, take the spin offffffffffffffffffff.

Do that and we'll arrive at a globalized economy that doesn't turn eveyone but the elite into peasants....otherwise, what you're calling globalization looks to me like the United States inviting third world standards into the United States as _the_ standard.

This congress and president doesn't obey or adhere to the same standards of responsibility that the ordinary citizenship does in Washington DC _has_to_, that is garbage....

the lying little "expleetive deleted"

That has to change....we need oversight and we need something beside greedy children running the government...

Das HomeLunt Securitag....bah das honkenshciess

Hey, take care of your dog! When its Planet of the Apes that little critter will be meat on the hoof.

The U.S. hasn't been attacked since September 11, 2001 because Al-Qaeda knows a good thing when they see it: George Bush in the White House is the best PR they could ever hope for to accomplish their larger goals. By striking the U.S., they risk making W. look bad and jeopardize the majority of Republican parrots lined up to do W.'s bidding.

Remember the Osama video a couple days before the 2004 election? Despite what W. and John Kerry had to say about it, our intelligence services agreed that Osama's intent was to give W. a little boost in the polls by playing boogie-man just before the election. This is documented pretty well in "The One Percent Doctrine," as is the overriding uselessness of the DHS. "Katrina" baby, that's what DHS has to offer.

Store up food & water for you and yours is my advice. These DHS idiots couldn't save their own leftovers.

What this proves is that the American delusion, i.e., that the Terrorist problem has in any way been ameliorated by this Administration is nothing short of a farce.

Here we are, just about 5 years later, and the battle goes on and another 4,000 people, if you believe the Government, have been killed. That was more people than died on 911.

So has the problem, $300B (mostly borrowed from China) been resolved, or did we simply move the fight overseas to Iraq, where we are still getting the same results, more Americans killed there than were killed in the USA 911, and more injured that were injured on 911.

And all they can say is get ready. Well then, 'You're doing a good job Mr. Bushy'.

We are being led down a dangerous path of double-speak and circumlocution. We don't need an Office of Homeland Security. What we need is a 'Peace Department.

It will be bigger and stronger than the Defense/War Department. Its objective will be to learn and study about disparate people around the world, and determine what we need to do in order to learn to live with disparate people around the world, who do not necessarily see things in the same fashion as Americans see them.

Folks, I remember when my people were considered, Enemies Of The State, and many of the same tactics were employed against us by some of our fellow American citizens and the government, i.e., lies, propaganda, dehumanization, blame, labeling... and it was all a lie.

Perhaps a class in Semitics will help the body politic to understand the Semites (a group made up of Arabs, Hebrews and others), instead of listening to the daily drumbeat of negative propaganda, mixed with some truths about these people.

laugh if you will, sir, but last night when i took my puppy for a walk he spent a lot of his time with his nose to the ground. while he's only an eight month old with no concept of 9/11, let alone the concept of time itself, i think i can say without hesitation that had he stumbled across a truly suspicious odor, well, he probably would have peed on it.

i sleep well, knowing that my dog is on the vanguard of national defense. when the time comes for him to step up and be counted, he'll be there (provided there's some sort of treat involved, of course).