I HOPE OBAMA OR BIDEN USE THIS

We need to attack the "GOP is Strong on Defense" meme and there's plenty of evidence we can use. The latest is the mess the terrorism watch list nas become under the criminal Bush regime.

Flaws Found In Watch List For Terrorists
By SIOBHAN GORMAN
August 22, 2008; Page A3
Wall Street Journal

The government's main terrorist-watch-list system is hobbled by technology challenges, and the $500 million program designed to upgrade it is on the verge of collapse, according to a preliminary congressional investigation.

The database, which includes an estimated 400,000 people and as many as 1 million names, has been criticized for flagging ordinary Americans. Now, the congressional report finds that the system has problems identifying true potential terrorists, as well.

Among the flaws in the database, which was quickly built by Lockheed Martin Corp. in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is its inability to do key-word searches.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of "potentially vital" messages from the Central Intelligence Agency have not been included in the database, known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, congressional investigators found.

When tested, the new system failed to find matches for terrorist-suspect names that were spelled slightly different from the name entered into the system, a common challenge when translating names from Arabic to English. It also could not perform basic searches of multiple words connected with terms such as "and" and "or."

Because the format of the data in the current database is "complex, undocumented, and brittle," some significant data will be lost when the system is replaced by Railhead, according to the congressional report. For example, scraps of information such as phone and credit-card numbers found when law-enforcement and intelligence officials empty a suspect's pocket, often called "pocket litter," will not be moved to the new system.