[mercy]

I read this over on CQ earlier today.

We must not forget that this sort of mentality can be traced back to Bush I and Reagan. It isn't just Gore lick's wall. It's bureaucratic infighting. Territorial member measuring.

The poor Homeland Security dept. takes a lot of flack and is accused of doing nothing by seemingly everyone. "All they have ever come up with is a dumb color code system" is the usual refrain.

If all they ever do over there is a good job of cross checking and collating data and then get it to the right LEOs or Special Forces branch ... that alone would be a monumental improvement over business as usual in DC.

[Enchante]

"We must not forget that this sort of mentality can be traced back to Bush I and Reagan. It isn't just Gore lick's wall. It's bureaucratic infighting. Territorial member measuring"

Absolutely - and such problems are endemic to all bureaeucracies - when we have numerous competing bureaucracies in rivalry with each other it just gets worse.

BUT, in my formerly naive state of mind, I well remember how in Feb. 1993 I thought the WTC bombing would be a huge wake-up call to all the intel agencies and to the (new) Clinton administration. I thought it was so obvious that (1) they had to contemplate that much bigger plots could be underway or would be in the foreseeable future; (2) that the threat of WMDs or other mass-casualty events indicated that WTC93 could have been far, far worse than it was; (3) that extensive reform and re-focusing of the intel agencies would be needed to transition from the Cold War to the brave new world of terrorists operating across the globe. The Clintonlites had every reason and opportunity to improve and re-focus our intel agencies, but that wasn't their agenda.