That's the title of this
article in tomorrow's Boston Globe. The single greatest threat posed by Al Qaeda is if they get their hands on a loose nuke. Without a nuclear weapon Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are just another mafioso type street gang. No worse and no better than some South American
drug cartels.
First we have to understand the real problem:
From Lawrence Korb's article:
First, the administration applauds itself for negotiating the Group of Eight Global Partnership against the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Under this arrangement, the United States has agreed to spend $10 billion over the next 10 years to safeguard and dismantle weapons of mass destruction and related materials in the former Soviet Union, while the other seven members agreed to raise another $10 billion. However, what they don't mention is that this agreement does not obligate the United States to spend any funds beyond what it has already spent annually since the end of the Cold War.
Europe is not doing any better:
Similarly, the other G-7 nations are allowed to count the funds they had previously allocated for clean-up in the former Soviet Union as part of their $10 billion contribution. More important, most of the pledged funds have not been allocated, and in any case are woefully short of what is needed: Securing the nuclear materials of Russia (not to mention the other states of the former Soviet Union) will cost $30 billion.
We are spending $10 billion per year on missle defense for the next 25 years for a system that everybody knows doesn't work today, and may never work. We could eliminate the single greatest threat posed by Al Qaeda if the United States and Europe combined would pony up $30 billion dollars. This is a big problem, but it is manageable if we had the will to solve it.
Korb points out the second part of the problem:
The second accomplishment that the Bush administration touts is its establishment of the Proliferation Security Initiative. Under this program, more than 15 nations will work together to board ships believed to be transporting weapons of mass destruction. ... Even Republican Senator Richard Lugar -- chairman of the Armed Services Committee and a Bush supporter -- has repeatedly criticized the administration for failing to ratify the treaty.
Korb identifies the third leg to this unstable stool. Bush wants to spend less money on the most serious threat to American's national security:
Finally, the administration speaks frequently of its support for the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which assists the states of the former Soviet Union in safeguarding and dismantling their enormous stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, delivery systems, and related materials. However, the Bush administration actually requested a decrease in funding in fiscal 2005 for the three major threat reduction programs in the State, Energy, and Defense budgets. If the Bush administration receives the $919 million it has requested for fiscal year 2005, this will be a decline from fiscal 2004 of $72 million, or more than 7 percent.
But we can afford to spend $6.8 billion per year on upgrading our nuclear capabilities.
The Bush administration's misguided policies on an array of nuclear issues have further undermined the world's efforts to halt proliferation. The administration has begun development of two new nuclear weapons; adopted a strategy that authorizes the use of nuclear weapons in a preemptive attack against nations that are close to acquiring nuclear weapons; and increased funding for conducting research and upgrading US nuclear capabilities to $6.8 billion, twice the amount the US spent a decade ago. Its message to the rest of the world in the area of nuclear proliferation is "do as we say, not as we do."
There you have it folks. That's the real threat we face. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are just another international crime cartel. Bin Laden plus a single nuke, now that's the real problem. You want to frame the threat of terrorism? Communicate this idea to the American people.
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