After visiting Port Charleston, SC, back in January to pick up a glider we were importing from Germany and seeing absolutely no apparent increased security, i.e., no harbor patrol, no Coast Guard, no video surveilence, only one (brain dead) security guard at the guard shack, so, no I don't feel safer. A week later President Bush gave a speech from the exact spot where I waited for our illustrious Customs Agents to process my paperwork and there were 3 Coast Guard ships in the harbor, several harbor partrol boats, security cameras and cops everywhere, Secret Service, etc. It became very apparent that we are wide open and all the hooha about "homeland security" is smoke and mirrors for the most part.
I do wireless telecommunications system testing. I've worked on the Mexican border in several places in CA, AZ, NM and TX and have seen with my own eyes illegals going back and forth with no one questioning them, including border guards who were more interested as to why we had a guy on a tower than the illegals streaming across.
The barge thing came up when I was talking to a guy who runs a tugboat business pushing barges up and down the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers. He seemed to think that it would be easy to bring anything you wanted to any place you wanted on the river system since nobody is checking. A "device" could be stored on a moored barge for months until they were ready to use it.
I doubt we'll see another successful attack in New York City or Washington, DC, due to the security measures in place, but other, smaller cities in the "heartland" such as St. Louis, Cincinatti, Louisville, Chattanooga, Memphis, Quad Cities, and Kansas City, among others, would seem to be softer targets vunerable to attack from the rivers they sit on.
Something tells me this is going to get a whole lot worse before it's over.
Anything is possible. We have no way of knowing what is being planned, or for when.
I find it heartening that people are aware enough to be discussing it openly on FR. Knowledge is always useful, even if we don't know when we're going to need it.