The award value is capped at ten billion dollars, and the likelihood that that amount will suffice is near zero. The term of the contract is five years with a five year renewal possible, which usually means guaranteed. Now in fifty years of combined computer technology business experience neither my wife nor I have ever seen a less defined task draw so much capital for so little believable benefit. I like the number of jobs this contract will create, but I absolutely abhor the lack of competent design that was placed on this project by the Request for Proposals (RFP) drawn up by our government.

We do need better security on our borders and I think technology can help us achieve that requirement. However, I have no fantasy about how the new technologies proposed here will perform in the real world. They are going to fail a lot before they reach the 90 percent certain stage of their development. At ninety percent success, which is really high for such new technologies, they will allow 30 million border crossings where they fail to identify the person crossing or in one of many other ways.

The illusion of success is evidently more to be desired than the reality of security. Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, President of the Migration Policy Center which is called by the Wall Street Journal an "Independent Washington-based Think Tank" made an amazing statement. In Journalese independent think tank can mean anything from a lobbyist to an industry promotion group not registered as a lobbying firm. It can also mean a group that can merely gather industry executives together to raise money for candidates at the drop of a contract. In any case Mr. Papadimitriou spoke about Homeland Security and this is what he said. (Homeland Security) "Puts us in a mode comparable to the cold war, where no investment is too large to achieve the aims even if the aims are unachievable; symbolism and making gigantic investments may be more important than real results". Now that statement comprises an attempt to establish a mandate to reckon with for our new Homeland Security branch of government. Spend lots of money even if you can't provide any better level of security. WOW!

Now I do love the way our politicians respond to the threat of terrorists crossing our borders, they spend money tightening up security where legally crossing the border is the rule and illegally crossing it is the exception. The rest of the border will still leak like a sieve but those legal border crossings will be at least ninety percent secure. Not bad for a program conceived and implemented under a Republican Administration. Come to think of it this one is far better than many of the programs implemented under the Cold War governments of both parties. At least it will eventually help Big Brother track everyone on the planet around wherever they might go. No stone will be left un-photographed, both top and bottom.

The last time I checked the cost of the attack by twenty plus terrorists has cost us over a quarter of a trillion dollars in Federal Government expenditures already. This has to belong in the Guinness book of records as the most effective paramilitary operation in human history. We are going to go on spending money like it was going out of style as long as we are obsessed with security related to people entering our nation. I can cross our border with Canada any day of the week several times and never see a border patrol agent. So can people who know the Mexican Border well. I am also certain that the leaky borders fronting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are far from secure. Maybe securing the nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere that are our worst nightmare should take precedence. It should particularly take precedence over this process of throwing money blindly in the general direction of one unsolvable problem.

One thing for sure, Mr. Papadimitriou and Accenture are not alone lining up at the rhino feeding stations being established in the Department of Homeland Security. If governmental bloat is a real problem I can see where it is going to reside for the nonce. Of course a lot of those expenditures will be for nonsense, not security, but then you can't build a government omelet without breaking a few dinosaur eggs. Nor can you replace "pork barrel politics" with "Rhinestone Rhino Rucksack" politics without spending a few trillion here and there. God bless the conservatives, they can outspend the liberals any day of the week. They just can't see spending it on people unless it is spent on identifying them or just plain keeping them in line.