Bush Turns to Big Military Contractors for Border Control

[Woodmonkey]

Bush Turns to Big Military Contractors for Border Control

WASHINGTON, May 17 — The quick fix may involve sending in the National Guard. But to really patch up the broken border, President Bush is preparing to turn to a familiar administration partner: the nation's giant military contractors.

Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the largest, are among the companies that said they would submit bids within two weeks for a multibillion-dollar federal contract to build what the administration calls a "virtual fence" along the nation's land borders.

Using some of the same high-priced, high-tech tools these companies have already put to work in Iraq and Afghanistan — like unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites and motion-detection video equipment — the military contractors are zeroing in on the rivers, deserts, mountains and settled areas that separate Mexico and Canada from the United States.

It is a humbling acknowledgment that despite more than a decade of initiatives with macho-sounding names, like Operation Hold the Line in El Paso or Operation Gate Keeper in San Diego, the federal government has repeatedly failed on its own to gain control of the land borders.

Through its Secure Border Initiative, the Bush administration intends to not simply buy an amalgam of high-tech equipment to help it patrol the borders — a tactic it has also already tried, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, with extremely limited success. It is also asking the contractors to devise and build a whole new border strategy that ties together the personnel, technology and physical barriers.

"This is an unusual invitation," the deputy secretary of homeland security, Michael Jackson, told contractors this year at an industry briefing, just before the bidding period for this new contract started. "We're asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business."

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[Snowden]

This sounds like a good idea. Apparently Bush is hearing the people in this, and that's got to get the media a bit upset. With all the devices described here available for so long - how many administrations have neglected even contacting these sources for surveillance on that border?

[Woodmonkey]

It looks like he is doing this in lieu of building the actual wall that people want built which would be in addition to beefing up the Border Guard. It's probably cheaper to hire these contractors and that's fine if they are going to do the job needed. However, they should not be a replacement to a wall, or series of walls.