Mindful of previous FBI mistakes, colleagues of the biodefense expert who killed himself on the eve of being charged in the 2001 anthrax mailings “are deeply skeptical that the bureau has gotten it right this time,” a Washington Post team tells — though a CNN team finds the man’s therapist painting a rather damning portrait. “Five lives and millions of dollars later, the anthrax-by-mail mystery may be solved, but the way the post office and many government agencies handle the mail has undergone major changes,” The Associated Press’ Randolph E. Schmid relates. “This raises questions about how we adapt to risk and terror, both short term and long,” Joel Garreau thumb-sucks in the Post, relatedly.

Feds: Critics question the Coast Guard’s mounting emphasis on overseas deployments “at a time when its aging fleet is stretched thin, resulting in shortfalls for domestic missions,” Danger Room’s David Axe reports — while the service’s chief promises Bloomberg’s Jeff Bliss that the chaos and ineptitude attendant to Hurricane Katrina “won’t be repeated in the next disaster.” The “incredible news” that TSA has hired a justly fired Minnesota official “is cause for concern,” The Minneapolis Star Tribune tsk-tsks. Since January 2007, DHSers have testified at 359 hearings and given 4,300 briefings to congressional committees, Government Executive’s Katherine McIntire Peters surveys — as Washington Technology’s Wyatt Kash has the House passing eight homeland security measures Friday designed to strengthen cybersecurity, among a myriad of other goals.

Obamarama: If the United States had done as Obama urges, “the terrorists would be in complete control of Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama would be coddling the terrorists,” Tim Michael Case trashes in The Tracy (Calif.) Press — while The Memphis Flyer’s Charley Reese argues: “Swapping one quagmire for another is hardly a brilliant foreign policy,” and Reason’s Radley Balko demands to know how Obama would pay for his “civilian national security force.” Left-liberals are signing onto an open letter to Obama in The Nation urging adherence to such key positions as “withdrawal from Iraq on a fixed timetable” and an end to “torture, abuse of civil liberties and unchecked executive power.” The Independent’s Robert Fisk, meantime, rues “that Obama has chosen for his advisers two of the most lamentablefailures of U.S. Middle East policy-making.”

Poly-ticks: The question confronting voters isn’t who was right on the invasion or the surge, it’s who do they want to see as CINC on TV, and “the angrier McCain sounds, the more tempted America will be to change the channel,” Newsweek’s Andrew Romano blogs. Obama still trails McCain substantially on the commander in chief and terrorism questions, The Boston Globe has a new Gallup survey showing. “’I know how to win wars,’ McCain said during a recent campaign speech. The immediate question that came to my mind was, ‘What wars have you won?’” a Chattanoogan contributor comments. By conflating the Iraq war and the “war on terror,” Bush allowed setbacks there to “undermine public perceptions of Republicans’ performance in combating terrorism more generally,” Dem adviser Samantha Powers suggests in The New York Review of Books.

State and local: “The Normal (Ill.) fire department got an oversized check for $100,000 to buy radios and other equipment to upgrade emergency communications, but the real money already is in the bank,” The Bloomington Pantagraph leads — while The Santa Fe New Mexican relays word that police serving the sprawling Navajo Nation are losing wireless access. The U.S. House last week approved legislation ensuring continued operation of a terrorism intel-gathering center in Seattle, The Tacoma News Tribunetells. Complying with the Real ID law might leave Alabama with a $16.3 million case of sticker shock, The Montgomery Advertiser advises. Business, government and academic leaders converged on Kansas State University last week to tamp down criticism of opening a DHS agro-bio lab there, The Topeka Capital Journal recounts — as Newsday notifies of a similar meet next week on Long Island, where DHS’s Plum Island Animal Disease Center faces closure.

Dying to kill: A pair of suicidebombings in Iraq last week “underscore the continuing challenge of attempting to identify and stop female suicide attackers,” U.S. News & World Report spotlights. U.S. officials suspect an al Qaeda network that recruits women, turning them into killers using a variety of methods, including rape, The Times of London tells — though a New York Times op-ed can identify “precious little evidence of uniquely feminine motivations driving women’s attacks.” For a decade, “we have warned that women would start playing a more aggressive role in groups like al Qaeda,” a policy analyst asserts in Newsweek. The rise of suicide bombings is one reason security is crumbling in Afghanistan, according to a Wall Street Journallook at Western Pakistan’s “suicide bombing network.”

Coming and going: “The common theory is that the shoe screening process is based on only one incident, but that is not true,” a TSAer tells The Orange County Register. A large bag with “bomb” written across it passed through Qantas check-in and security screening at Brisbane’s domestic terminal, The Courier-Mail recounts. DHS’s assertion that it can seize and hold laptops on no grounds at all “could affect thousands of British business travelers and tourists each year,” The Daily Telegraph alerts. The beheading of a Canadian Greyhound passenger by his seatmate “is raising questions about the bus line’s security practices,” CTV Winnipeg leads.

Border wars: The federal immigration database anchoring South Carolina’s new immigration law has moved into the eye of a Senate storm, The Greeneville Newsnotes.Some immigration experts attribute a decrease in illegal immigration to the U.S. economic downturn, rather than the stepped-up enforcement measures referenced in a new report, New American Media relates. Texas’ Parks and Wildlife Commission has rejected a $105,000 federal donation, nixing the surrender of 2-1/2 acres of state-owned land for the border fence, The Austin American-Statesman says. The FBI is probing hundreds of Border Patrol corruption cases whereas a decade ago it saw but a few dozen a year, Reuters reports — while Austin’s KEYE-TV 42 sees police looking for a man they say posed as DHS agent to prey on the undocumented.

Courts and rights: A federal judge ruled Friday that the Fort Dix terror plot trial will remain in Camden, N.J., and that references to al Qaeda can stay in the indictments, The Courier-Post recounts. Osama bin Laden’s former driver was a “primitive” chauffeur not involved in planning attacks, the self-described 9/11 architect told jurors in written testimony Friday, the Post reports — after which the Times sees the defense resting in the first American war crimes trial since World War II, and Agence France-Presse predicts a verdict sometime this week. The Edmonton-based lawyer representing Omar Khadr — the next up for a tribunal — estimates the defense has spent tens of thousands of dollars of their own money defending “one of the most hated figures in Canada,” the Sun News notes. A source confirms to Time Magazine that, in 2002 and possibly 2003, the United States imprisoned and interrogated one or more terrorist suspects on Diego Garcia, the U.K.-owned Indian Ocean island.

Over there: Amidst a jury impasse, the British trial of three July 2005 bomb plotters has collapsed, The Daily Telegraph tells. Pakistan angrily denies its intel service helped plan a deadly blast at the Indian Embassy in Kabul last month, The Chicago Tribune tells — although The Guardian also has Islamabad promising to weed out Taliban sympathizers. South Asian leaders gathering on Saturday demanded strong action to stop terrorism spreading like “wildfire” in the region, AFP reports. China’s military has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers to terror-proof the Olympics, AP reports — even as an official suggests to Reuters the much-hyped Muslim threat is likely overstated, and BBC News has 16 Chinese border cops killed this morning in a grenade attack in the Muslim northwest. The July 9 attack in Istanbul may have been designed to occupy the U.S. consulate, taking hostages on behalf of al Qaeda, Terrorism Focussuggests — while Radio Netherlands has Ankara announcing the arrest of suspects.

Qaeda Qorner: Taliban and Pakistani military spokesmen deny a CBS News report that al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri was hit by a U.S. missile attack, The Pakistan Daily Mail relates — though Reuters has al Qaeda confirming the death of its biochemical expert and three others in such a strike. During his Washington drop-by last week, Pakistan’s P.M. “said all the right things about the war on global terrorism [but] stopped short of declaring Osama bin Laden Public Enemy No. 1,” The Youngstown (Ohio) Vindicator frowns. “A change in course by al Qaeda that yields fewer Muslim casualties would knock the pins out from under [its] critics who condemn the un-Islamic nature of attacks that kill Muslims,” ex-CIAer Michael Scheuer suggests in Asia Times. “Al Qaeda has been weakened by the war on terrorism and by its own actions,” a PoliGazette poster propounds.

When the moon hits your eye: “A former lieutenant in the Taliban, recently released after serving five years in prison, has opened a new local eatery,” The Spoofspoofs. “The Taliban Pizza Man offers dine-in, take-out, and delivery service from its new location on Main Street (just south of the Post Office). Owner Rajah Saeed Muhammed describes his business as ‘a simple way for a simple man to earn a living and feed his family.’ He is out of prison after spending five years for planning terrorist attacks on non-military targets. When asked about his past, he replied that ‘it was an honest living, but now I have grown past that.’ Items on the menu include a spicy pizza, called the ‘Suicide Bomber,’ which includes pepperoni, onions, jalapenos, crushed red peppers, and green chilies and offers ‘an explosion of flavor in every bite.’ The order is brought to your table by a waiter with cardboard tubes simulating dynamite strapped to his chest.”