Post-9/11 Homeland Security Spending Spree: A Waste Of Money?

On the edge of the Nebraska sand hills is Lake McConaughy, a 22-mile-long reservoir that in summer becomes a magnet for Winnebagos, fishermen and kite sailors. But officials here in Keith County, population 8,370, imagined this scene: an Al Qaeda sleeper cell hitching explosives onto a ski boat and plowing into the dam at the head of the lake.

The federal Department of Homeland Security gave the county $42,000 to buy state-of-the-art dive gear, including full-face masks, underwater lights and radios, and a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar capable of mapping wide areas of the lake floor.

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Comments

[PTL24]

02:44 PM on 08/31/2011

By spending billions on security,trampling rights through the Patriot Act, and simply scaring people, the terrorists have already won. Our way of life has changed so substantially through the idea of homeland security, that the freedoms we are trying to protect are slowly and unintentionally being eroded away.

[Celebrindan]

08:23 AM on 08/31/2011

"The real problem is that we have not had an attack for the media to run non stop coverage on."

That's what Cheney thought in 2000.

[Celebrindan]

08:21 AM on 08/31/2011

If folks knew how large an army private security firms have on American soil right now, they'd be pretty pissed.

The army that will invade the U.S. will not be wearing blue helmets, they will be black, and they are already here.

There will be no book burnings this time.

They will simply turn them off, and you will hear no more of them.

[rae112754]

02:56 AM on 08/30/2011

Tighten up at customs at the airports. And let the military take over guarding our borders in conjunction with the existing border patrol. And you can stop wasting money on this Homeland Security. Besides if you take Homeland Securit and package it with the Patriot Act what you have is the same thing back in the 30's in Germany, its called the SS.

[SportyJim]

06:01 AM on 08/30/2011

You really should have some grasp of history before making statements like that.

[rae112754]

03:05 PM on 08/30/2011

You need to go back to history 101, if you dont see the similarities between the two on how all it all began and started.

[Celebrindan]

06:47 PM on 08/29/2011

Twice I have posted here castigating the waste of this lunacy, and twice my writings have been censored.

Neither contained vulgarity, beyond the truth.

Yet, neither appear.

I see you.

[Yorksgal]

07:29 PM on 08/29/2011

Keep trying - it is strange what gets through and sometimes it can take a very long time for your comment to be posted and other times it is posted straight away.

[CSNC]

11:40 PM on 08/29/2011

Yorksgal,

Re. your comment: "Darrell Issa could also be on stage as to how to safeguard your vehicle."

---

I like it! Thanks for sharing.

H

[conal6]

10:12 AM on 08/30/2011

Truth is a vulgarity, therefore can be censored .

[Ron Booth]

05:21 PM on 08/29/2011

To this day one of the best policies ever put in place to help prevent and attack is also the lowest tech and least expensive.

'IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING'

Beyond that better communications between law enforcement and the intelligence community and making the best uses of those communications is the best protection we have. The rest of it is 99.9% VERY expensive fluff that is supposed to make it easier for us to sleep well at night.

[Yorksgal]

05:18 PM on 08/29/2011

Way before now people have tried to bring awareness to how much of these funds were being used, but they were ignored.

There needs to be an audit done of all these funds - going back to the start and, if the funds were used for frivolous ideas/items i.e. West Virginia charging for $3,000 worth of lapel pins and billing the federal government for thousands of dollars in cellphone charges - then they should be made to repay the government back.

And, of course, for every time some one does a terrorist act, America is always behind and then jumping on the bandwagon and throwing money at that particular situation to the exclusion of others.
What is needed is for world security experts to sit down and come up with all possible scenarios and produce world-wide measures that will ensure the safety of all countries.

[Ron Booth]

05:27 PM on 08/29/2011

I almost agree, right up to the point of 'all possible scenarios' IMHO we need to prepare for the most LIKELY scenarios and to have an ongoing dialogue with world terrorism experts to keep abreast of new/developing tactics that terrorist groups are contemplating.

Trying to prepare for 'all possible scenarios' would spend the US and our allies into bankruptcy overnight.

[intotheabyss]

05:13 PM on 08/29/2011

Creating a police state in a large country is very expensive!

[Ron Booth]

05:07 PM on 08/29/2011

its past time that we draw a line that realistically reflects sufficient spending for the military and the DHS and what amounts to just ridiculous spending.

Sure we want to spend everything we NEED to to insure the safety and security or our nation and its citizens BUT there is an enormous gap between being prepared for likely eventualities and almost every last single possible scenario. It seems that in many cases that neighboring communities and municipalities could realistically rely on 'mutual aid' with regard to some of the resources that get deployed rather than trying to fully prepare each and every municipality for numerous eventualities.

Of course the great fear that strikes directly at all politicians regardless of party is that the mere suggestion of reducing funding for DHS or the military is that any and all political opposition immediately starts screaming 'weak on terror' 'weak on defense' 'doesn't care about protecting our citizens' and all the rest of the rhetoric that goes along with these issues.

And of course if there were any kind of cuts made and then there were any kind of attack that took place anywhere, anyone who had suggested or actually made any cuts would be strung up from the nearest street lamps even of that which had been cut wouldn't have had any effect on the attack at all.

We need our defenses as any nation does, but nothing says we have to go absolutely crazy about it and spend ourselves broke.

[JohnMavis41]

04:56 PM on 08/29/2011

Wouldn't it have been cheaper just to open up a strip joint with buxom blonde dancers?
Dancers attrack Al Qeada like flies on armpits. Serve' em a few double shots and fly them
back to Saudi

[cphill]

04:35 PM on 08/29/2011

Sophisticated terrorist attacks??? 9/11 was carried out with some cheap box cutters and a little deception. And therein lies the problem - it's hard to plan for the unforeseen.

I suspect that many of these redneck places love all these toys, but it's questionable whether they're any safer from terrorists. Besides, terrorists aren't necessarily carrying the Koran and chanting, "Death to America." Remember Timothy McVeigh???

[malander]

04:19 PM on 08/29/2011

Rural podunk towns applied for and got homeland security money after 9/11. I know, I lived in one that applied for funds and got it. I thought it was ridiculous at the time and still feel that way. What they really did with that money I don't have a clue, but no terrorist in his right mind would have stayed in that town, never mind attacking it. As long as the patriot gravy train is flowing people will take advantage of it. It is shameful. Call it a need for homeland security and you had a chance at the free money.

[FZliveson]

04:17 PM on 08/29/2011

I am more afraid of runaway government by far, than I am of angry foreigners in this nation.
How many hundreds of buildings were not leveled on 9/11/01?
How much was know that could have stopped that attack and did not?
We do not need a brown-shirt army to protect us. We are able to do that ourselves.
Time to protect us from corruption, poverty and abuse by a privileged class; the same thing our forbears were fighting for and for which they designed our original government.

[probo]

04:41 PM on 08/29/2011

nice post..

[Bufford P Tusser]

04:15 PM on 08/29/2011

OK all you "small gubmit fiscal conservatives," can't use the "Dems have run EVERYTHING since 2006" twaddle on this one.

This massive pork spending was put into motion on your hero's watch.

First they scare the beejebbers out of you bed wetters with the mushroom cloud howie and blow a trillion bucks stuffing the pockets of the connected and supportive.

What say ye, super patriot's?

[SlammoFandango]

04:18 PM on 08/29/2011

Free ourselves from the Left/Right paradigm. That’s what I say.

[probo]

04:45 PM on 08/29/2011

Excellent advice Slam..

[Bufford P Tusser]

05:03 PM on 08/29/2011

Looks good on paper my friend. However when one parties stated goal is the defeat of the POTUS and destruction of the Fed government not a lot of middle ground to be had.

And we can expect any compromise from the right and honest discourse from them about the time pork levitates.

[SlammoFandango]

04:14 PM on 08/29/2011

‘Tactics’ regardless of their strengths always inevitably fail when they are employed under flawed ‘Strategy’. As long as US foreign policy places the strategy for protecting American citizens against terrorism as secondary to that policy’s primary objective of protecting the status of petrodollars as the ‘World’s Reserve Currency’ by propping up corrupt dictatorships and monarchies which violate the human rights of their own subjects, no degree of expenditure toward tactics at home will eliminate the desires of subjugated peoples toward convincing the US citizenry that we should demand our leadership change its foreign policy as it applies to the injustice inflicted upon them.

Our nation’s foreign policy turns a blind eye to regimes which play by the rules of international finance yet subjugate and violate the human rights of people living within such countries which, by official decree, discriminate against gender, religion, race, ethnicity, and even genealogical lineage, yet our nation and its bankster-controlled allies respond with great alacrity toward any country which might challenge collusionary agreements maintaining the strategy for keeping the status of petrodollars as ’The World’s Reserve Currency’.

The greatest insult to our intelligence regarding such policy is the audacity of our leaders in telling us that kinetic military interventions supporting Reserve Currency Strategy are instead missions of humanitarian magnanimity when in fact the crimes against humanity the US itself inflicts are in fact exponentially worse than those of even the most trumped up of allegations against said boogiemen.