From Declan:
:>Even before the fire at the crippled Pentagon across the Potomac had been :>extinguished, frightening shortcomings in the District's emergency :>preparedness were laid bare. Communications broke down, and key District :>leaders scrambled to exchange information via e-mail and pagers. The fire :>department had scant reserve equipment, a single hazardous-materials unit, :>and no search-and-rescue units available to dispatch. There was no master :>terrorism-response plan in place, so agency heads reached for whatever was :>available on the nearest shelfwhich for some meant Y2K plans and, for the :>fire department, a 1968 deployment guideline drafted in response to the :>riots following the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. ---------------- I've been hearing about the budget for the CIA/NSA/etc. defense budgets of numbers like 30 billion - B I L L I O N - at the same time that I hear about how their technology is outmoded, outdated, that they're all ignorant of useful knowledge of the enemy (like how to communicate in their language), that they are under-manned, etc. Considering all the tax money which has been spent by these and other departments for useless symbolic projects which accomplish nothing, I am just taken aback at how the important things which are truly useful, especially at a time like this, that "infrastructure" which was the big buzzword some time ago, has been neglected. There are weights which fall upon you; then there are sinking holes which pull you down. Keep pouring that money into that sieve, y'all. .. Blanc