Mr. Beers, who's previous claim to fame, was as the
prime mover behind the shootdown of that civilian
passenger plane, over Peru; isn't he a little seasoned to pulling a Tony Lake (re Cambodia
'70, volunteered for Muskie, ended up as Vance's
point man in the Nicaragua & Iran debacles) You
don't see Wayne Downing or Richard Clarke, complaining this way.
It seems that Beers's squabble with the administration is one of overall strategy for handling the war on terror. Bush has decided that against an amorphous threat like terror, the only defense is offense.
Building a wall fifty miles high and thirty-thousand miles wide around the U.S., in a country with a large indigenous muslim population, would not rid us of terrorists, so less extreme measures are still going to be ineffective. Bush's apparent opinion is that the only way to fight terror is to reform its core regions through liberalization and democracy, or, where this is unlikely, to at least control the terrorist ability to base in such areas.
Given Bush's strategy and its assumptions, the cost-benefit analysis of prioritizing things like port security and homeland security funding comes out as rather expensive. Further, if we can eliminate terror using measures employed primarily overseas, we will have much greater privacy and freedom than if we focus on creating a fortress america via a well-funded homeland security department, as recommended by Beers.
Beers may be right, but it was the Pres's call to make.