Termites/terrorists

I am not an exterminator, nor have I ever had the need to call a terminator. That being said, I will posit a plan for dealing with a termite problem in a house. I would imagine the homeowner would want to first eliminate all the termites in the house, probably by using one of those huge tents and insecticide. I think they would also want find a way to keep any more termites from entering the house. They might be able to surround the base of the house with some sort of chemical deterrent. The final step they might take would be to find any termite nests in their yard and destroy them. In destroying them they would want to make sure no termites are ever able to rebuild that nest. An exterminator, or someone who has dealt with a termite infestation, might have a better way to deal with it, but that, nevertheless, is my plan.

I think there is a similarity between dealing with termites in a house, and dealing with terrorists in a country. Pres. Bush's plan involves at least two of my steps. The Patriot Act was designed to help law enforcement agencies eliminate the terrorists in the country. They have done a good job at this, and would not have been able to do as much were it not for the Patriot Act. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have focused on destroying the "nests" and preventing any terrorists from rebuilding those nests. This has been tremendously effective. By eliminating the havens with Sadaam and the Taliban, we have reduced the effectiveness of Al-Qeda, and possibly prevented their launching another attack.

The only step our government has not taken is the middle one. We have not secured our borders. The other steps are important, but will never be completely effective without that middle step. We have to protect our borders. We have to ensure we have a sufficient amount of Border Patrol officers, and we have to make sure they have the necessary equipment and means. Recently our border cops have been targeted:

"An already volatile U.S.-Mexico border climate worsened in the past week as U.S. Border Patrol agents in the Tucson sector came under gunfire three times, with one shot so close the agent heard the bullet whiz past.

With 80 reported attacks since Oct. 1, assaults on Tucson sector agents are on pace to more than double last year's total, when agents reported 118 assaults, sector spokeswoman Andrea Zortman said Monday.

The fast-rising number of assaults has officials worried, particularly after a federal agency-wide alert was disseminated last week, warning all federal agents that members of the Gulf Cartel had marked two agents for kidnapping and execution."

I am all in favor of giving our border cops the authority to shoot first and then ask questions. They ought to be able to do whatever they need to do to keep illegals from crossing our borders. We may even want to hire Hank Quinlin to head the Border Patrol. We need to do something.