Informant38

We have not given the cities and municipalities -- the police, the firemen, the hospital workers, the first responders, who are on the front lines -- we have not given these people one red cent to help them keep us safer from the madmen within our midst in four months.


It has been a little over a year and two months since America was jolted from its tranquility by the noise, smoke and flames of two exploding commercial airlines as they smashed into the twin towers.


Yet, in these intervening months, except for the initial help we provided to New York and to Washington to aid in closing the hemorrhaging wounds of economic disruption and human devastation, caused by the terrorist attacks, not enough has changed here at home.


True, we have chased bin Laden across the landscape of Afghanistan and probably cleansed that nation of the training camps for terrorists for now. We have made progress, I am sure, in some disruption of the al-Qaida network worldwide.


But no one in this chamber, and no one in this city can look the American people in the eye and say to them: "Today you are much safer here at home than you were 14 months ago."

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How utterly irresponsible. How callous. How cavalier. With this debate about homeland security, politics in Washington has reached the apogee of utter cynicism and the perigee of candor.


No one is telling our people the plain unvarnished truth. It is simply this.


This Department is a bureaucratic behemoth cooked up by political advisors to satisfy several inside Washington agendas.


1) It is intended to protect the president from criticism and fault -- should another attack occur.


2) It is intended to eliminate large numbers of dedicated, trained federal workers, so that lucrative contracts for their services may be awarded to favored private entities.


3) It will be used to channel federal research moneys and grants to big corporate contributors without the usual federal procurement standards that ensure fair competition and best value for the tax dollar.


4) It will foster easier spying and information-gathering on ordinary citizens which may be used in ways which could have nothing whatsoever to do with homeland security.
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{Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat, West Virginia, speaking the truth on the floor of the senate, before God and Mammon. in Salon}