Will Democrats want to retreat from homeland security too?

Washington Post:

Hobbled by inadequate funding, unclear priorities, continuing reorganizations and the absence of an overarching strategy, the Department of Homeland Security is failing to achieve its mission of preventing and responding to terrorist attacks or natural disasters, according to a comprehensive report by the Government Accountability Office.

The highly critical report disputes recent upbeat assessments by the Bush administration by concluding that the DHS has failed to make even moderate progress toward eight of 14 internal government benchmarks more than four years after its creation.

The report is to be released to lawmakers today, as the Democratic Congress, Republican White House and presidential candidates from both parties are beginning to debate the administration's record of accomplishments since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, whose sixth anniversary will be on Tuesday.

It echoes a sober report card issued by the former Sept. 11 commission in December 2005, which awarded mostly failing and mediocre grades to the administration's efforts to prevent another terrorist attack.

The GAO states that after the largest government merger in more than half a century, the DHS met fewer than half of its performance objectives, or 78 of 171 directives identified by President Bush, Congress and the department's own strategic plans. The department strongly disputed the report.

...

It has met the most important. There has been no attack on US soil by the Islamist religious bigots. But this is just further proof that relying on guidelines does not give you a full picture of the effectiveness of any government agency. To ask the question of whether the Democrats want to retreat from homeland security is to point out how ridiculous their position on Iraq is because it may not have met some of their arbitrary objectives. It also suggest that the GAO is acting like a partisan sword for Congressional Democrats.

The NY Times reports on a leaked study of Iraqi security forces that suffer from some of the same problems as our Homeland Security Department. Most of the material in this study could have been deduced from news reports which suggest that the Iraqi forces are not ready to take over without support from the US. Military commanders such as Maj.Gen. Rick Lynch have been blunt about this for months. If is part of their case for why we cannot prematurely pull out as many Democrats have argued for. Expect the Democrats to use the shortfalls as an excuse for embracing failure, their preferred option in Iraq.