Yahoo! News - Bush Downplays Thompson's Terror Worries
WASHINGTON - President Bush played down on Saturday a stark warning from his resigning health chief that the nation's food supply is largely unprotected from terror attack.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said in a speech Friday announcing his coming departure from the Bush Cabinet that he worries "every single night" about a possible terror attack on the food supply.

"We're a large country, with all kinds of avenues where somebody could inflict harm," said Bush, asked about the issue after an Oval Office meeting with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. "We've made a lot of progress in protecting our country, and there's more work to be done, and this administration is committed to doing it."

Despite dramatic increases in inspections of food imports, only "a very minute amount" of food is tested at ports and airports, Thompson said.

"For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do," Thompson said. "We are importing a lot of food from the Middle East, and it would be easy to tamper with that."

Bush likes to ignore such warnings, or hasn't anyone noticed that yet? While I believe it would be damn near impossible to inspect every little thing (or person) that comes into this country, here is another top level official who is pointing out yet another problem and Bush downplays it once again.

That's OK, soon the cabinet will be full of "yes" men so he won't have to answer the critics anymore- they will be dismissed as outsiders, or sore losers, or the "loony left", or whatever deflection the administration can come up with so it won't have to address any "problems". Let's hope one of those "problems" doesn't rise up and bite us on the ass.