HIGHEST PRIORITY?

The absurdity of the Bush administration's claims that we're somehow safe grows exponentially on a daily basis.

Most recently, a Justice Department audit found the FBI backlog in translating hundreds of thousands of hours of wiretap recordings has meant that "nearly 24 perecent of ongoing ... counterintelligence and counterterrorism intercepts are not being monitored."

[Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A.] Fine's investigation determined that as of April, the FBI had not translated more than 123,000 hours of recordings "in languages primarily related to counterterrorism activities," such as Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto. The study also found that more than 370,000 hours of recordings in languages connected to counterintelligence probes had not been deciphered by that time. The backlog accounts for 30 percent of the total hours of audio recordings in those categories, the report said.

"We are giving this effort the highest priority," said FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Mind you, this is but one shortcoming that we're being told about.