Democrats call for increased transit security

[davidinalameda]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/11/MNGJ2DLUT71.DTL

A growing chorus in Congress wants to spend more on securing U.S. bus and rail lines in light of last week's bombings in London, but top Homeland Security officials were lukewarm about the idea Sunday.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" that his agency is always looking at beefing up prevention.

"We want to do it in a disciplined way, we want to do it in a risk- focused way, and we want to be driven not just by last week's events but by all kinds of threats -- because, you know, we still worry about aviation, we worry about bioweapons."

[MindPilot]

1. My g/f and I were having this conversation yesterday

and then decided that the line to go through airport security probably wasn't the most appropriate place.

Our security seems to be completely reactive. They use airplanes; we beef up airline security; they bomb a bus; we want to run bus passengers through metal detectors. We do evacuation exercises; they get to look at our procedures.

As a nation WE have to admit there is a problem. People who are willing to die themselves to kill westerners and disrupt the economy have much more at issue than "hating freedom". We need to figure out what that is and fix it. That doesn't mean backing down or "letting the terrorist win"; that means we have to know our enemy.

We need to get serious about domestic security. Deploy National Guard troops to guard chemical and nuclear plants. Inspect inbound cargo. Put some serious control on explosives and their precursor elements.

Our inability to do things like quickly contain wildfires or react when there are four hijacked planes in the sky is a open invitation to attacks.