Homeland Security Can Protect Our Ports?

Bullshit. They can't even protect their own headquarters.

The agency entrusted with protecting the U.S. homeland is having difficulty safeguarding its own headquarters, say private security guards at the complex.

The guards have taken their concerns to Congress, describing inadequate training, failed security tests and slow or confused reactions to bomb and biological threats.

For instance, when an envelope with suspicious powder was opened last fall at Homeland Security Department headquarters, guards said they watched in amazement as superiors carried it by the office of Secretary Michael Chertoff, took it outside and then shook it outside Chertoff's window without evacuating people nearby.

It turned out the powder was harmless, but it might not have been. The head of the security company says it wasn't a real problem because all mail entering the complex is irradiated to prevent harmful anthrax from getting inside.

But two congressmen are quite concerned by what they're hearing from these guards.

"If the allegations brought forward by the whistleblowers are correct, they represent both a security threat and a waste of taxpayer dollars," Democratic Senators Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote. "It would be ironic, to say the least, if DHS were unable to secure its own headquarters."

Even more disconcerting than the suspicious powder incident is unauthorised access to the headquarters.

Some guards who continue to work at Homeland, who would speak only on condition of anonymity because of fear of losing their jobs, said they knew of two instances in which individuals without identification got into the sensitive complex.

Oh, I don't know about you, but I've no problem with letting a foreign government, any foreign government, control some of our major ports. As long as Homeland Security is on the job, we can all sleep soundly at night. Did I say bullshit? Thought so.