DHS: The Department of Agriculture for the Twenty-First Century!
Friday, September 17, 2004 at 12:54PM ■"Watch Out," Joseph S. Nye's Review of Fortress America by Matthew Brzezinski, Washington Post, 12 September 2004, p. 3 [Book World].
I have long predicted that the Department of Homeland Security will become the Department of Agriculture for the 21st century. What do I mean by that? The joke on Ag is that it now has something like two bureaucrats for every farmer in America. Well, this review notes that DHS has 186,000 employees, and most good estimates of global terrorism put the highest numbers of active players in the 10,000 range, with a potential for almost 100,000 more active sympathesizers or potential recruits. That means we already have one DHS employee for every terrorist on the planet and, with any luck (given the recent Republican flare for enlarging government), we'll pass the 2-for-1 mark within the second Bush Administration.
Best line in the book: Israeli security expert who says TSA stands for "thousands standing around."
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