Bush’s measure onport security may bea case of ‘too little,too late’.
Bush Signs Weakened Port Security MeasureBy Cliff Montgomery President Bush on Friday signed a massive port and cargo security bill, less than a month before Election Day on Nov. 7th. Bush called the legislation’s enactment a renewal of the federal government‘s commitment to “work tirelessly to keep our nation safe and our ports open for business.”With Senate land Security and Governmental Affairs Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, House land Security Chairman Peter King, R-N.Y., and other lawmakers at his side, Bush cast the bill, one of the last passed by Congress before its midterm election recess, as part of an unprecedented Republican-led effort “to safeguard our homeland” against terrorist attacks.”We’re going to protect our ports. We’re going to defend this homeland, and we’re going to win this war on terror,” said Bush, echoing his party’s election-year message.What Bush failed to mention was that the very best way to protect the nation is to actually go after the enemy. Remember them? Those who attacked us on Sept. 11th, 2001: Osama bin Laden, his group al-Qaeda, and to a lesser extent the Taliban–the old leaders of Afghanistan who openly harbored al-Qaeda for so many years, and still work to hide him today.Bush and his Republican-led Congress have instead allowed bin Laden to remain on the loose by betting everything on a strange act of fruitless nation-building in Iraq, a country which of course had nothing to do with the 9/11 terror attacks in the first place.That’s a lot of things, but it’s not protection of the homeland. In fact, it seems the only time leading Republican Party members remember al-Qaeda is in the last weeks of a close election.So what does the bill provide? It codifies existing programs such as the Container Security Initiative, which allows limited screening of U.S.-bound cargo in foreign ports, as well as requiring radiation detection technology at 22 of the nation’s busiest ports by the end of next year. It also authorizes development of high-tech equipment to scan cargo containers.About 11 million cargo containers are shipped to the United States every year. Industry officials estimate that number may double by 2014. That’s what made the subject of scanning all cargo containers for possible nuclear materials a hot-button political issue in Congress during the last several months. Democrats wanted legislation which would have required the land Security Department to scan all U.S.-bound cargo at foreign ports within three to five years. Republicans, backed by the shipping industry, argued that it may hurt big business, and that it was technologically unfeasible to set an arbitrary deadline.In the end, Congress passed a maritime security bill that pleased no one. It requires the department to establish a test program to scan all containers at only three foreign ports. The program will then be expanded to other ports–if the department determines that it is a ‘feasible’ act which will not disrupt trade.But even as they were putting this plan together, lawmakers were quietly working to cut nuclear detection office funding at our own nation’s ports, according to an August issue of Global Security Newswire.Why? Because the office the Bush Administration has created to oversee nuclear detection at U.S. ports, the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO), is considered by many as another unrealistic, unfocused entity which fails to have anything resembling proper congressional oversight–you know, essentially the same problems which plagued land Security before and after last year’s Hurricane Katrina.It’s a recipe for disaster very few care to repeat. Responsibility for implementing the DNDO’s plan currently sprawls across a patchwork of government agencies, including the FBI and the Energy, Justice, Defense and State departments. Lawmakers hope that, by cutting funds, they may force the DNDO to correct its many problems before it’s too late. In June the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended withholding $80 million in “research, development and operations” from fiscal 2007 land Security Department funding until an agreement is reached regarding the responsibilities between the various agencies involved in domestic nuclear detection. The detection office itself is part of the land Security Department.A House version of the same appropriations bill reduced funding by $35 million to $500 million. The House Appropriations Committee also removed funding for the office’s “surge” program. The program was designed to provide federal, state and local law enforcement with portable equipment for nuclear detection during periods of high threat conditions.The House even trimmed the office’s research funding request from $100 million to $85 million.”[The DNDO] was partly a government social experiment,” former DNDO deputy chief Mike Carter told Global Security. According to Carter, the new office will in time keep the various agencies from being just “warring factions.” Various governmental and independent critics, however, have questioned just how well the agencies have been brought together, and add that the proposed funding cuts appear to reflect some of those questions.The office’s mission has been re-defined a number of times in a number of different ways, said Michael Levi, a nuclear terrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. Lawmakers may well be asking just what the agency does.”I suspect that the funding cuts may have been made in part to send the signal that Congress needs more information,” Levi told Global Security.”Key parts of Congress appear to have different ideas of what DNDO’s mission is, and those sometime differ from how DNDO defines its mission itself. That’s problematic,” he added.
