Too Focused on 9/11 To Prevent New Attacks

That's the basic premise of this piece on U.S. homeland (in)security in The Times yesterday:

The arrests overseas this week of people accused of planning to use an explosive that would be undetectable at airports illustrates the significant security gaps, they said.

While the department has hardened cockpit doors and set up screening for guns and knives, it has done far too little to protect against plastic and liquid explosives, bombs in air cargo and shoulder-fired missiles, the experts say.

The nation is still at risk from the same “failure of imagination” cited by the 9/11 commission as having contributed to the success of the 2001 attack, several argued.

“They are reactive, not proactive,” said Randall J. Larsen, a retired colonel in the Air Force who is chairman of the military strategy department at the National War College in Washington.
Robert M. Blitzer, who served 26 years in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including as head of its counterterrorism unit, said the federal government had a serious problem because its personnel today turned over far too quickly.

Mr. Blitzer, now an analyst at ICF International, in Fairfax, Va., said: “They don’t have enough continuity and knowledge to know what they’re up against. Stability is a big thing for identifying trends. It’s not easy to do. Sometimes all you have is just snippets of information.”

Justin P. Oberman, a former senior policy official at the Transportation Security Administration, said the problem was not lack of imagination but limited money available to invest in the technologies needed.

Limited money? That's bullshit. The DHS has plenty of money to have Bush friends in lucrative contracts... it's just these sweetheart deals do ZIP to protect us.

While your can of diet soda will be screened out, the entire underbelly of the plane - its cargo holds - undergo almost no checks. And isn't it a little strange that a "smart" terrorist hasn't figured out what a muddled pacifist blogger from Vermont did years ago?