Can these guys get ANYTHING RIGHT??? Answer…..NO.

By LARRY MARGASAK
Associated Press Writer

President Bush’s program to rapidly detect biological attacks and disease outbreaks has been anything but speedy in getting started, the victim of bureaucratic bungling, a federal watchdog says.

Administration officials acknowledge problems but say the system has begun operating - 21 months after Bush announced the surveillance initiative and three years after he ordered the effort in a presidential directive.

The program kept bouncing between sections of the Homeland Security Department. Managers were not hired. The approach to the surveillance kept changing. And the necessary technology wasn’t operating, the Homeland Security inspector general says in a report obtained by The Associated Press. The report is expected to be released publicly as early as next week.

Underscoring the importance of the issue, the report comes as Britain is struggling with an outbreak of highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease, a threat to farm economies and tourism.

More at the Associated Press