Reply #24: The bush/cheney malfunction team

[Cha]

haven't done anything to prepare in case we are. Eric Alterman has an excellent article in the Nation about this very subject..


snip~
" Again and again the Bush Administration has slashed Congressionally mandated funding for precautionary measures in the areas of port security and nuclear and chemical security. They withdrew troops and intelligence agents from Afghanistan, where they were tracking Osama bin Laden and a reconstituted Al Qaeda, in order to throw them into Iraq, where no terrorist threat existed. Together with the Republican majority in Congress, they have treated "homeland security" as a pork distribution program. What money is appropriated receives little or no oversight. Columbus, Ohio, is free to spend homeland security funds on bulletproof vests for fire department dogs; Newark, New Jersey, on air-conditioned garbage trucks; and the District of Columbia, on leather jackets and self-improvement seminars for sanitation workers."


Much more..
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060102/alterman