The Blog of toussaint

"We can not let the world's worst weapons fall into the hands of the world's worse people."  That is what Bush always says about WMDs and why we went to Iraq.  If he believes what he says, why aren't we securing all the nuclear material that we know is out there?  Right now, according to IAEA, there are more than 200 sites around the world including 100 sites in the US that have nuclear material that is not secure.  Let's look at few examples.

Texas A&M University and many other college campuses that do nuclear research, have nuclear reactors that are not guarded by any security.  Anyone with a campus ID can walk on that campus, walk into the right building and take as much material as they can carry.(Gee, hope the bad guys don't read blogs!)  Five armed men could take over a building long enough to make a crude bomb and blow themselves up along with an entire campus full of people. 

There are also out of work scientists from Russia who could sell their expertise for top dollar.  Some are already helping Iran.  Although we do have an agreement to help Russia secure and/or destroy its stockpiles of fissile material, we are only spending one billion a year on the program. For what it costs us to spend one month in Iraq, we could buy all the material that is not secured in a warhead to keep out of the wrong hands. 

Our ports are not secure, so if these world's worst were to make a bomb and ship it to one of the New York ports, they could wipe out that city by remote control.  They wouldn't even have to take it off the ship as long as they get into port. 

We are also wasting 10 billion a year (the most we spend on any weapons system) on a missile defense system that all the experts say is at best 10 years away from being operational.  And even if it were operational today, everyone in this administration knows that the likelihood of a country with long range missiles actually using them is very very low because these missiles have a return address and we would use part of our 10,000 missile arsenal to destroy their country.  The only countries that have that technolgy today are mostly our friends except N. Korea and China.  China would never deploy such weapons against us because they plan on taking over America one dollar at a time. . . but that is a blog for another day.  Scientists can tell who made a bomb after it blows up from what is called a nuclear signature.  So no one with a country to lose is willing to play the M.A.D. game (Mutually Assured Destruction). Only Al Qaeda would employ such means. 

The 9/11 Commission was inconclusive about Bin Laden's having the materials to execute a nuclear attack but did have a meeting with a former Russian scientist about how to construct a weapon.  According to reports, the meeting ends with the scientist saying, "Making the bomb is easy. Its getting the nuclear material that is hard," to which Bin Laden reportedly answered, "What if I already have the material?".  i sure hope that intelligence is as faulty as that which took us to war!

If we don't get serious in a hurry,  the next attack is going to make 9/11 seem like a fond memory compared to the carnage and economic destruction of a nuclear attack in NY.  Imagine having to rebuild one of the largest cities in to world: we are doing such a good job of rebuilding New Orleans, it will be easy, right?  It is up to all of us to bring this issue to the forefront.  The "news" channels are always trying to scare us with far-fetched theories of what terrorists are trying to do but when it comes to real threats, they are silent.   Get serious, Mr. Bush, and put our money where your mouth is.

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