Harry Krause wrote:
snip
One might thank that with "terrorism" uppermost on Bush's mind, he
would
pay much more attention to the actual defense of the homeland. But he

really isn't. Our US Border Patrol along the border with Mexico has
only
a tiny fraction of the manpower and wherewithal it needs for the job.

Our ports are not properly protected. Container ships and their
containers are not properly searched, and our east and west
coastlines
are wide open.
snip
It's impossible to a thinking person to take Bush seriously on
homeland
security. There isn't any.

Careful, Harry. You're at risk of siding up with a very conservative
crowd on an issue. There are lot of repubs, neocons, whatever you want
to call them that are ****ed a "W" over the issue of illegal
immigration.

I heard in an radio interview this morning that the Border Patrol has
caught something like 80,000 people illegally crossing from Mexico just
since the beginning of the fiscal year (IIRC the federal fiscal year
starts in October). They acknowledge that over 600 of these people
caught had links to know terror groups.

The BP admits that they get 1 in 4 at best.

Something like 20% of the people coming across the border are "OTMs"
(other than Mexican). There are a surprising number of people from
other continents sneaking in via Mexico. And most of the OTMs are
released if the BP can't find any criminal history on them.

Conservatives are going to have to face up to the fact that President
Bush is failing miserably on border security. And it isn't because he
is inept - he knows what is happening and chooses to do pretty much
nothing.