DLC Still Living in Fantasyland

DLC | New Dem Daily | October 4, 2004 Terrorist Watch Lists: Three Years, No Action One of the most basic intelligence failures that contributed to 9/11 was the inability of federal agencies to access 12 separate terrorist "watch lists." Two of the 9/11 hijackers were on a CIA watch list, but this information never made its way to the FBI or other law enforcement agencies that might have been able to detect and foil the plot. The urgent need to combine these lists has been one of the most common recommendations for measures needed to prevent a future attack. The Progressive Policy Institute called for it in January of 2002. Both the nonpartisan Hart-Rudman Task Force on Homeland Security and the nonpartisan Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age called for this measure in October of 2002. Recognizing its importance, Congress assigned this task to the new Department of Homeland Security in its authorizing legislation. Most recently, the 9/11 Commission echoed these recommendations. Yet three years after 9/11, the Bush administration continues to drag its feet on the watch list issue, as revealed in a scathing new report by the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security. According to The Washington Post, the report concluded: "DHS has not fulfilled its leadership responsibility. 'Connecting the dots' and ensuring better communications (among agencies)... is a large part of why DHS was created. If DHS... does not assume this interagency coordination responsibility, the question remains, who will?" Ah, but there's the rub. The administration didn't much want to create DHS. It opposed Democratic proposals to set up the new department for seven months, and then, under mounting political pressure, flip-flopped and pretended the whole thing was the president's idea to begin with. "This is an administration that didn't want a homeland security department, and has insured it's as dysfunctional as this report suggests," Juliette Kayyem, executive director of Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, told The Post. The DHS report cited a host of bureaucratic challenges that have thwarted taking the basic step of consolidating the 12 watch lists. But the real problem is a lack of leadership from the White House. Administration insiders say the whole process could have been completed in no more than three months, with the right push from on high. There's no question DHS has the Congressionally established authority to make it happen. But instead, after three years, the initiative remains at square one. This perpetual delay in accomplishing one of the simplest steps needed to track down and stop terrorists operating in the United States is especially maddening at a time when the president is campaigning for re-election on the claim that he is the indispensable man in keeping Americans safe -- a tough, resolute leader who is focused like a laser on every aspect of the war on terror. He should pick up the phone, knock some heads, and overcome the bureaucratic resistance to combined watch lists. That's what presidential leadership should be all about.

Why, after nearly 4 years, are political organizations still demanding that the Bush Administration do what is right? I've heard of beating a dead horse, but what indication is the Bush Admin. giving that it will do anything other than what suits its agenda? Early in the Bush presidency many people and organizations looked bold deserved our admiration when they stuck their neck out, against contemporary political winds, and demanded that Bush do the right thing(s). Now, after learning the standard response by Bush to all things non-Neocon, these same organizations now seem rather foolish in wasting their time and resources broadcasting these "pleas". Let's put our resources into replacing the dead horse with a living, energetic and responsive stallion named Kerry/Edwards.