Tammy Bruce: 'Virtual' Border Fence Scrapped

'Virtual' Border Fence Scrapped

After wasting $85.5 million dollars, the Feds have finally admitted the ridiculous 'virtual' border fence is a complete and utter failure. Not surprisingly, the Amnesty Feds have announced they won't have a working 'virtual' fence for at least another three years, toward the end of the next president's term. No matter who the winner, this now gives them more than enough time to resurrect the amnesty bill while keeping our nation's border wide open. I'm simply speechless at the overwhelming incompetence and BS surrounding this entire debacle.

'Virtual Fence' Along Border To Be Delayed

The Bush administration has scaled back plans to quickly build a "virtual fence" along the U.S.-Mexico border, delaying completion of the first phase of the project by at least three years and shifting away from a network of tower-mounted sensors and surveillance gear, federal officials said yesterday.

Technical problems discovered in a 28-mile pilot project south of Tucson prompted the change in plans, Department of Homeland Security officials and congressional auditors told a House subcommittee.

Though the department took over that initial stretch Friday from Boeing, authorities confirmed that Project 28, the initial deployment of the Secure Border Initiative network, did not work as planned or meet the needs of the U.S. Border Patrol...

Investigators for the Government Accountability Office had earlier warned that the effort was beset by both expected and unplanned difficulties. But yesterday, they disclosed new troubles that will require a redesign and said the first phase will not be completed until near the end of the next president's first term...

But officials said yesterday that they now expect to complete the first phase of the virtual fence's deployment -- roughly 100 miles near Tucson and Yuma, Ariz., and El Paso, Tex. -- by the end of 2011, instead of by the end of 2008...He added that the system was developed with "minimal input" from Border Patrol agents, resulting in an unworkable "demonstration project" instead of a operating pilot system. He blamed the DHS for acting too hastily in trying to deliver a working pilot by last June.

A nongovernment source familiar with the project said that the Bush administration's push to speed the project during last year's immigration debate led Boeing to deploy equipment without enough testing or consultation...With more time, the source said, equipment and software will be tested more carefully and integrated with input from Border Patrol agents in three remote locations. "Doing it this way mitigates all kinds of risk," said the source, who was not authorized to speak publicly. Those running the project "basically took equipment, put it on towers and put it out there without any testing as such" because of the tight deadline.

In other words, we've all just been taken for a ride, and for something we didn't even accept as adequate in the first place. In order to do whatever possible to avoid building an actual physical fence and to get the amnesty bill passed, Bush, McCain and their amnesty cronies made sure a monumental amount of money was wasted on a fake, untested, unreal fence to placate conservatives who simply want to keep this nation safe from predators.

And now, after the tens of millions of dollars spent on an unworkable, failed system, and a year of the Feds touting the genius of the 'virtual' fence, Amnesty Secretary Michael Chertoff now says the border will not be protected by a physical fence or even a virtual fence. Instead:

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday that the department will "take elements" of the pilot project and apply them elsewhere, but that it plans to expand the number of mobile ground surveillance units from a handful to 40, and to double its fleet of three unmanned aerial vehicles. Boeing has offered DHS a $2 million credit from the funds it has already received.

Technology at the border is "not necessarily going to be in the configuration of P28," Chertoff said, adding that unmanned aerial systems in particular "will play a major role" in most border areas.

Wow. We'll now have 40, count 'em 40, ground units and a whopping six (woo hoo!) aerial vehicles to patrol our southern border. What is the chance here that we've been BS'd from the beginning here, folks?

Posted by Tammy · February 28, 2008 12:42 AM · Permalink
Border Security | Fed Incompetence | Immigration | Moronic Convergence

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Those pathetic bastards.

Posted by: Kimj7157 at February 28, 2008 05:25 AM

I said here 1.5 years ago when GWB signed the bill it was more lefty/progressive "Read my lips!...!" from the Bush clan. I was right. The fence is a conservative law and Bush/McCain are liberals from word "Go!"! It will never happen.

Just another liberal lie from a progressive with the last name Bush.

Posted by: Rod at February 28, 2008 11:18 AM

I heard a listener on Laura's show say this and it makes perfect sense. If we can sense a gnat moving toward Area 51 in Nevada, I think we can make this virtual border fence happen. If we can send a shuttle into space then for the love of God what is wrong?
Well it is this. There is no true political will, that is what is wrong and it makes me sick!

Posted by: GenRach at February 28, 2008 05:02 PM

Glad to see that my tax dollars were "well spend" yet again.

Posted by: ltlme at February 28, 2008 06:36 PM

i mean, "well spent" ....and to think I would at least spell my little quip correctly....

Posted by: ltlme at February 28, 2008 06:40 PM

Funny how we can't get a virtual fence built, but any top secret bases will send a battalion to surround you if you set a toe on the property. Funny how they can make that secure and have the top of the line people keeping the Pentagon secure from cyber-attacks, but somehow can't manage to get this fence built. How odd. And now not only will it not get built by the pro-illegal-immigrant President Bush, but it will get pushed into the Presidency of either Obama, Clinton, or McCain, all of whom are pro-illegal-immigrant. How odd.

Posted by: Troy Camplin at February 28, 2008 07:31 PM

What a crock! Michael Chertoff is an incompetent boneheaded moron. A lying supercilious arrogant smirking .... [don't get me started!].

You're right, Tammy. MC is just carrying out GWB's actual meretricious dishonest amnesty policy.

The MSM, GWB, McCain, Obama, HRC & Congress are betraying the American people, who overwhelmingly want an ACTUAL FENCE erected ASAP!

The lying dishonest political elites continue colluding to mollify their special interest funders---the WSJ is as complicit with this betrayal as any multi-culti moron on the ultra-left!

If there was a REAL third-party option, a candidate with cojones, huevos [note Mexican slang for manhood or bravery or courage], the American people might back him. Tancredo & Duncan Hunter just are too spectacularly uninspiring on the TV/MSM front to overcome the gigantic obstacles that the Beltway/WallStreet elites put in front of an illegal immigration candidate.

Plus the academicide fascists would scream "RACIST" and get traction.

Keep on punching, Tammy. Let's keep on punching alongside you.

Posted by: daveinboca at February 29, 2008 01:38 AM

Again more selective ignorance by the American people that this was never anything more than “virtual” smoke being blown up our collective asses, I’m sure that several hundred miles of razor wire and a few good shots on high towers would work just as well and probably be cheaper, certainly more convincing but probably not as “sympathetic”

If half these government officials had their way the American dollar would be printed “en espanol” that it might as well be as they have certainly squeezed the last value out of it. I can’t compete with legally organized slave labor.

The idea of a bi-lingual country is absolute crap. America was supposed to be and was founded to be a country assimilated of different cultures united under one ideal.

I’ve worked construction for 30 years and worked beside and with many illegal immigrants; it’s not that these people don’t understand English it’s that they don’t want you to think they do. Therefore we say the more we beat them the more English they speak. It isn’t a racist thing. I love eating tacos, especially when they're served up by Jennifer Lopez.

But seriously... We should not perpetuate our own ignorance by catering to theirs.

Posted by: Mr Vertigo at February 29, 2008 07:59 AM

Remember the way he slammed the pen down on the desk and ran out of the room after Bush signed the bill to create the border fence? I've seen people show more enthusiasm at gunpoint. And you know what annoys me? Bush is an old-fashioned liberal republican: NCLB, Rx drugs, the Keynesian stimulus package, amnesty, the real estate bailout. But we conservatives are blamed for him!

Posted by: Jimeo at February 29, 2008 10:39 AM

Yeah, that Keynseanism is really starting to show up -- can you say stagflation? We've almost gone back to the 70s.

Posted by: Troy Camplin at March 1, 2008 07:25 PM

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'Virtual' Border Fence Scrapped

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