From The Dept. Of NOT Keeping US Safer

By Cernig

We need a new DHS Threat Indicator - one that denotes the level of threat that Bush's Dept. of Homeland Security itself comprises to Americans. It would range from "Telling Scary Stories As Usual" through "Spying On Everyone" to "FUBAR".

President Bush's program to rapidly detect biological attacks and disease outbreaks has been anything but speedy in getting started, the victim of bureaucratic bungling, a federal watchdog says.

Administration officials acknowledge problems but say the system has begun operating — 21 months after Bush announced the surveillance initiative and three years after he ordered the effort in a presidential directive.

The program kept bouncing between sections of the Homeland Security Department. Managers were not hired. The approach to the surveillance kept changing. And the necessary technology wasn't operating, the Homeland Security inspector general says in a report obtained by The Associated Press. The report is expected to be released publicly as early as next week.

..."The IG's report documents bureaucratic muddle at its worst," said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "We didn't realize what an understatement it was when NBIS told us its system was not operational."

"More than three years after the president announced the creation of NBIS it still has no permanent director or staff, and its computer system is still under development. This does not appear to be a functional operation," Dingell said.

What amount of money has dissapeared already into this incompetence funnel, I wonder? And which private contractors got the no-bid cream?