DHS Terror Research Agency Struggling

[cal04]

Science and Technology Unit Crippled by Turnover, Budget Cuts, Priority Shifts
The federal research agency in charge of countering emerging terrorist threats such as liquid explosives is so hobbled by poor leadership, weak financial management and inadequate technology that Congress is on the verge of cutting its budget in half.

The Homeland Security Department's Science and Technology Directorate has struggled with turnover, reorganizations and raids on its budget since it was established in 2003, according to independent scientists, department officials and senior members of Congress.

At the same time, the Bush administration's overriding focus on nuclear and biological threats has delayed research on weapons aimed at aviation, a controversial choice that was questioned anew after a plot to blow up U.S.-bound airliners from London was made public Aug. 10.

Few experts believe that accelerated research alone would have been certain to stop a bomb plot involving liquid or gel explosives. Screening for such weapons poses both operational and technological challenges, experts said. But more research on approaches to countering emerging threats from conventional explosives improves the odds of detecting each attack, experts agree, and the years lost when work on new technology is not occurring cannot be recaptured, they said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/19/AR2006081900846.html

[bluedeminredstate]

1. Ken Mehlman forgot to mention this

information last week on Meet the Press as he hyperventilated and engaged in a near hysterical Tom Cruise-like verbal barrage about how great his party is on using their super-duper spy tools to catch terr'sts and how the Democrats want to take those tools away (screw the Constitution - that's so pre-9/11!). He didn't say that HIS PARTY'S agency is so fucked up that they might get their funding cut. An executive agency with the Chimperor as the boss. Sheesh, that's like saying they don't know what they're doing. How's that making us safer again, Ken?

If there is a bigger tool/douche bag in the GOP I haven't heard about him. Mehlman is such an obseqious syncophant that he probably got arroused talking to David Gregory about how tough and focused the Chimperor is on killing every last terr'st in the whole wide world.

:crazy:

[DeepModem Mom]

2. K&R.