There are 6 THOUSAND miles of borders between Mexico and Canada alone....
Again, you dodge the argument that Barnacle and I raised (which is that the MORE troops and BP personnel that are manned on our borders, the MORE secure our borders become) by suggesting that border protection is impossible because it can't be done “100% perfectly” (false dilemma)--i.e. there will always be those few that manage to slip through.
Like I said (sorry I didn't ping you), it's a ridiculous argument that is purposely constructed to avoid discussion of common sense measures that would MOST CERTAINLY enhance and improve our security from terrorism and border hoppers.
What would I do?
If it were left up to me, I'd bring back thousands of our troops that are on baby sitting missions in countries like Japan, Germany, Haiti, Bosnia and redeploy them on our borders (north and south) until they could be replaced permanently with BP personnel. I'd halt ALL immigration from terrorists harboring nations. I'd appoint a no nonsense INS commissioner that is 100% committed to enforcing the immigration laws of the land, not a tired Open Borders Beltway Hack like Ziglar who is only interested in how many services the INS can extend to immigrants.
That's just for starters. There plenty of other actions we could take, like installing hi-tech monitoring equipment and surveillance techniques across those 6 thousand miles which would make the job of apprehending border jumpers that much more effective.
None of these actions are physically impossible. All it requires is some political will, which is sadly lacking in Bush and Congress for that matter.
No, I'm not setting up a false dilemma anymore than you are. We merely disagree on your and Barnacle's seemingly obvious assumption that more troops (BP or otherwise) can at this point make more than diminishing returns in nabbing terrorists.
I don't think that has been proven at all, especially if you assume that our border control is a disaster to begin with. Removing resources from elsewhere and burning them in the old isolated INS/BP infrastructure could have been decided by GW to be a net waste of resources.
Perhaps it was decided that putting more into INS before the Homeland Security dept was organized would've caused more chaos and porous-border interagency-responsibility confusion than it would've helped. For example, combining the Coast Guard and INS under the same authority might cure more problems than merely dumping more funding into two independent bureaucracies. Like in Brownsville in my home state at the confluence of the Gulf of Mexico, Rio Grand and Mexican border. Which is more effective in identifying suspicious terrorist activity: Merely doubling the existing funding of the INS, Customs, and Coast Guard; -or- combine their reporting structure into a single entity that is specifically responsible for terrorism and go from there?
Maybe this is why GW kicked Lott's ass when he indicated he'd sit on his butt and not pass Homeland Security during the lame duck session???
So again, I merely discount your premise that it is obvious that adding more fuel to the fire first is the best first step. Additionally, I do not assume that transferring deployed troops out of Japan (with Korea looming,) or depopulating bases in Germany (such a Ramstein as a major support and logistical center for the conflict in Iraq) and retraining them for Border Patrol duty is the best use of the military's limited resources right now while we're in the midst of global conflict.
And finally, I find it laughable that any poster on this board is arrogant enough to believe that they could possibly be informed on this issue so much more so than the POTUS/SECDEF/SOS/NSA etc, that they would call the current Administration's actions "bordering on treason!"
I'm not a bushbot, but I can at least see that this crisis is not simple enough to ever be framed in a simpleminded "either/or" dilemma.