Bush Security Efforts Slip on Bioterror, Cargo, Chemical Plants

[papau]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=amtIdG1oFP7s&refer=politics

Bush Security Efforts Slip on Bioterror, Cargo, Chemical Plants

By Jeff Bliss

Sept. 5 (Bloomberg) -- PharmAthene Inc. had a new anthrax antidote to offer, and the U.S. government was in the market for one.

Francesca Cook, a PharmAthene vice president, recalls that a February meeting with federal officials went well -- until the company asked when bidding on the contract would open. The government officials had no answer. They still don't.

Five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, President George W. Bush's administration is still struggling to put to use the $169 billion Congress has since appropriated for homeland security.

While no one argues the threats have been eliminated, some areas have clearly improved. The federal dollars -- a little more than half the $320 billion cost of the Iraq war -- have resulted in stronger airline cockpit doors, better baggage screening and intensified oversight of U.S. ports. At the same time, there's been far less progress in preparing to respond to bioterror attacks, securing chemical plants and screening air cargo.

``It's just taking us far too long to do what we ought to be doing,'' says former Democratic Representative Lee Hamilton of Indiana, co-chairman of the commission that investigated Sept. 11. ``There has been a lack of urgency.'' <snip>

[Monkeyman]

1. Yep on buses,trains,planes,borders, and readyness of military

[papau]

3. So those buzz words -buses,trains,planes,borders, and readyness-will be

the GOP song and dance for next 8 weeks as they pretend that they did not create the problem or were slow in solving it - but rather they are on the job - finally.

[Monkeyman]

4. I agree but we keep raming it home five years you have done nothing

[spindrifter]

2. So this is what we throw back in the faces of those

Congress people who think they need to drop everything else this session and focus on "security."