Tuesday evening: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama poo-poo an actual fence for securing the U.S. southern border, and talk up ‘”surveillance” and “deploying effective technology.”

Thursday morning: Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff concedes that after extensive testing, the “virtual fence” doesn’t work and the concept will have to be overhauled, delaying any deployment of the virtual fence for three years.

The Bush administration has scaled back plans to quickly build a “virtual fence” along the U.S.-Mexico border, delaying completion of the first phase of the project by at least three years and shifting away from a network of tower-mounted sensors and surveillance gear, federal officials said yesterday.
Technical problems discovered in a 28-mile pilot project south of Tucson prompted the change in plans, Department of Homeland Security officials and congressional auditors told a House subcommittee.
Though the department took over that initial stretch Friday from Boeing, authorities confirmed that Project 28, the initial deployment of the Secure Border Initiative network, did not work as planned or meet the needs of the U.S. Border Patrol.

Wow. That position remained operable for about thirty-six hours. (Hat tip, Mickey Kaus.)