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Homeland Security and Congress
By Joseph A. Zdonczyk, Wolcott
Homeland security is to many the most critical issue that faces our country today. Two years ago as a candidate for the 5th Congressional District opposing the Democratic incumbent, Mr. Maloney, and Republican Mark Nielson, I was interviewed on WATR radio in Waterbury on Talk of the Town. It was a time shortly after the attack upon the U.S.S. Cole and the resultant loss of 17 naval personnel. I was asked by the host, Mr. Ed Flynn, to explain what had happened. My response at the time was simple: "It was a massive failure of intelligence." Two years later, President Bush acknowledged that there was indeed a problem with intelligence.
Did it take any prescience or great wisdom on my part to conclude that our country was under attack even then? We had 240 military personnel killed in Lebanon and had experienced bombings and terrorist attacks in Tanzania, Kenya and the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia over the years, not to mention the earlier attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.
During the campaign I participated in five debates with the two other candidates. At every opportunity Mr. Maloney would mention that he was a member of the Armed Forces Committee. No one would disagree that we had then and still have now the most advanced military hardware and the best trained personnel in the world. However, as a member of the Armed Forces Committee, it was incumbent upon Mr. Maloney to have recognized the necessity to sound the alarm and to demand greater vigilance and accountability of those agencies responsible for intelligence gathering. He failed to do that; and Mrs. Johnson shared in that failure. Both were oblivious to what was happening in the world around us.
The office of Representative in Congress is awesome. The power inherent in the hands of a competent person can be used to great advantage for the betterment of innumerable people, not just in the district but across the country and around the world. But that person must be a leader. Mr. Maloney and Mrs. Johnson have demonstrated their lack of leadership capacity. They have underutilized the power and authority at their disposal and have opted instead for the tried and true "good old boy" approach: If you want to get along you've got to go along. That may have been acceptable in the past, but we're living in perilous times. We can't afford incompetence and blind adherence to party bosses, as exemplified by both Mr. Maloney and Mrs. Johnson, if we hope to survive as a nation.
Mr. Zdonczyk is the 5th Congressional District candidate for the Concerned Citizens Party.
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