Government Estimates

Here's a copy of the headline I spotted first thing this morning.

WASHINGTON, May 7 - After spending more than $4.5 billion on screening devices to monitor the nation's ports, borders, airports, mail and air, the federal government is moving to replace or alter much of the antiterrorism equipment, concluding that it is ineffective, unreliable or too expensive to operate.

What I didn't copy and paste were all of the excuses that were being used for this debacle...as most of them were just as you might expect - "Well, having something was better than nothing at all." (Why is having an expensive "Something that does nothing" better?)

The good news? It shouldn't cost more than $7 billion to fix the screening devices in the airports. Then they can concentrate on the rest of the systems and that shouldn't cost more than $15 billion. Of course these figures are only government estimates...don't expect anyone to be held responsible for the final numbers.