Bush Seeks Cabinet Post for Homeland Security

Re “Bush Proposes Cabinet-Level Homeland Security Department,” June 7:

FBI agent Coleen Rowley testifies that bureaucracy is crippling the FBI, and President Bush announces at the same moment that he’s creating ... more bureaucracy! Republicans have always claimed that they cut fat from government, but the Bush diet plan is carbo-loading on a massive, suicidal scale.

David R. Peck

Laguna Beach

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The Bush administration’s proposal to create a new Department of Homeland Security is well justified and long overdue. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and other prominent Democrats have been advocating such a Cabinet position for several months. Hopefully, Bush will be able to persuade many of his fellow Republicans to come aboard. Our national security depends on it.

Bob Teigan

Simi Valley

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With the statement that “freedom and security need not be incompatible” (editorial, June 7) the editors are not really looking forward. In the end we will have to give up certain freedoms to make ourselves secure. Each day we stand in lines at airports, are searched before entering certain areas, and we divert funding to security, thereby limiting other government programs. Reforming agencies into larger government bodies will not work.

We will eventually come to the realization that we will have to use sophisticated identification cards. We will eventually do it. We have enjoyed so much freedom that we just can’t bring ourselves to the realization that we will have to place some limits on our freedoms.

Ron Parker

Glendale

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There used to be a Department of Homeland Security: It was called the U.S. Army. Wouldn’t one group under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld do a better job than a gaggle of bureaucrats under Bush?

I’d sure sleep a lot better knowing Rummy was on top of it. Bush is absolutely frightening.

Robert W. Lovell

Huntington Beach

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With Bush’s sudden proposal that the position of homeland security chief be elevated to a Cabinet-level post, another diversion has been created to take our attention from the troubling questions about his prior knowledge of 9/11. It’s time for him to stop employing the “Bush dodge” and start giving us some answers.

The craven secrecy and subterfuge are just more dirty tricks from an administration that continues to act with a complete lack of ethics or a sense of responsibility. Its pursuit of power and oil at all costs has cost us all too much already.

Mike Mast

Yorba Linda

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I’m happy to know that the president and the government are making such great efforts to protect us from the danger from terrorists. Will they be able to do this effectively, since they don’t seem to be able to prevent thousands of illegal immigrants and tons of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs from entering the country? How, then, can they stop a relatively few terrorists, with their destructive equipment?

Richard W. Weinberg

Sherman Oaks

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Does no one else notice the ironic contradiction between two front-page articles? FBI agent Rowley asserts that an “ever-growing bureaucracy” hampers agents’ ability to function. Meanwhile, in a news analysis, Doyle McManus writes, “In creating a giant new Cabinet department to defend the nation from terrorist attacks, President Bush is hoping to solve several problems at once--some real, some bureaucratic, some merely political.”

Where else but Washington could the creation of a giant bureaucracy be perceived as resolving bureaucratic inefficiencies?

Arch Miller

Arcadia