Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, shown at her confirmation hearing on Jan. 15, was unhappy about the national security exercise in 2007. Its expense was one complaint. Chris Usher/European Pressphoto AgencyFrom The New York Times:
WASHINGTON — The homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, is re-evaluating the largest federal program for testing the country’s ability to respond to terrorist attacks, one of several Bush administration initiatives she has ordered to come under review.
As governor of Arizona, Ms. Napolitano sent a searing two-page letter to her predecessor as secretary, Michael Chertoff, complaining that a $25 million national exercise in October 2007, which she and 23,000 other federal, state and local emergency workers participated in, was too expensive, too long in planning and “too removed from a real-world scenario.”
Now, in her first weeks as head of the Homeland Security Department, Ms. Napolitano has ordered a review of that program and several others, including cybersecurity, a strategy for protecting the border with Canada, and the vulnerability of power plants and other critical infrastructure.
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My Comment: Not a well written article. It states that people are frustrated and unhappy. OK.
That there should be better coordination. OK to that also.
Disaster drills and emergency planning should be better planned, and it should not be so expensive to run. OK to that.
But there are no details .... this is just an article that is dedicated to bashing President Bush and his policies.
I am not impressed.