Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

Homeland Insecurity, Republican Style

Congressional investigators testing U.S. port security
smuggled enough radioactive material into the United States last year to make
two dirty bombs, officials told a Senate panel today.

In a test in December, undercover teams from the Government
Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, carried small amounts
of cesium-137, used in industrial applications, in the trunks of rental cars
through official crossing points on the U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico.
The material triggered radiation alarms, but the undercover investigators
used false documents to persuade U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspectors
to let them through.

In presenting the results of the tests to a subcommittee
of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today,
GAO officials and other witnesses pointed to gaps in border security that
they said could be exploited by terrorists seeking to detonate a radiological
device, or dirty bomb, in the United States.

The GAO told the subcommittee it was “unlikely”
that the Department of Homeland Security would be able to complete its goal
of installing 3,034 new-generation radiation detectors by September 2009 at
border crossings, ports and mail facilities.

Radioactive
Materials Smuggled Into U.S., Investigators Say

The undercover team used a simple computer to make fake Nuclear
Regulatory Commission documents, bought radioactive material and the container
in which to transport them, all commercially available, then walked it all right
into the good old U.S. of A.

BOOM.

The ports of entry were Washington state and Texas, with the radioactive
material uncovered by inspectors, but they still managed to get into the country.

Customs and Border Protection agents didn't suspect the documents
as being forged. The undercover agents had a counterfeitbill of laiding and
bogus NRC documents, both of which went undetected by trained Customs and Border
Protection agents.

But if I hear one particular D.C. Democrat talk about this being
“an alarming wake-up call” of our ports, I'm going hide his Magoo
glasses. Yep, that comment came from the inimitable Carl Levin, the same guy
I chastised
on Sunday for calling Feingold's censure motion “premature.” Wasn't
the Dubai port deal supposed to be that wake up call, coming on top of all the other
ones, like when John Kerry campaigned that only 5% of port containers were being
inspected. Memo to Levin, THAT'S STILL THE CASE.

This is serious, people. Does Tom Kean have to show up with his
hair on fire?

In testimony before the panel, Thomas
H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey and chairman of a commission
that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said preventing terrorists
from gaining access to nuclear weapons must be the nation's top security priority.

A nuclear attack by terrorists on U.S. soil is less
likely than the kind of bombings that targeted transportation systems in Madrid
in 2004 and London last year, killing and maiming hundreds of people, Kean
said.

“But a nuclear event is possible, and it would
have profound and incalculable consequences,” he said. “It would
put millions of lives at risk. It would devastate our economy and way of life.”

While the Bush administration has taken some positive
steps, he said, “they are not nearly enough,” and “the size
of the problem still totally dwarfs the policy response.”

Although a program to secure nuclear materials in the
former Soviet Union is 14 years old, about half of the materials in Russia
“still have no security upgrades whatsoever,” Kean said, adding
that it will take another 14 years to provide the upgrades at the current
rate of effort.

“Is there anybody anywhere who thinks we have
14 years?” he asked. “This is unacceptable. [Al-Qaeda leader Osama]
bin Laden and the terrorists will not wait.”

He also noted that about 40 countries “have the
essential materials for nuclear weapons” and more than 100 research reactors
worldwide have enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear device. Yet,
many of these facilities lack adequate protection, and U.S. agencies still
have not made “a maximum effort against what everybody agrees is the
most urgent threat to the American people,” Kean said.

The Republicans have DONE NOTHING on homeland security. Their
idea of making us safe is to throw a preemptive war into the Middle East and see if
what shakes out in the end favors our side. It's not working out very well so far. There has not been one iota of leadership
out of the Republicans who control Congress on homeland security. Now we see
the consequences: undercover agents smuggling small amounts of nuclear material
into the country, enough to make a dirty bomb.

The words of Stephen Flynn echo throughout the Republican halls
of Congress, as George W. and his bunch continue to do nothing.

A
FAILURE TO PROTECT

The United States is living on borrowed time — and
squandering it. The attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center
towers and the Pentagon highlighted just how open the United States is to
unconventional attacks. The widespread economic and social disruption that
flowed from the suicidal acts of just 19 terrorists also exposed the Achilles'
heel of the world's sole superpower. The transportation, energy, information,
financial, chemical, food, and logistical networks that underpin U.S. economic
power and the American way of life offer the United States' enemies a rich
menu of irresistible targets. And most of these remain virtually unprotected.

(snip)

The degree to which the Bush administration is willing
to invest in conventional national security spending relative to basic domestic
security measures is considerable. Although the CIA has concluded that the
most likely way weapons of mass destruction (WMD) would enter the United States
is by sea, the federal government is spending more every three days to finance
the war in Iraq than it has provided over the past three years to prop up
the security of all 361 U.S. commercial seaports. This myopic focus on conventional
military forces at the expense of domestic security even extends to making
the physical security at U.S. military bases a higher budget priority than
protecting the nation's most critical infrastructure. In fiscal year 2005,
Congress will give the Pentagon $7.6 billion to improve security at military
bases. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security will receive just $2.6
billion to protect all the vital systems throughout the country that sustain
a modern society. … …

A
neglected home front

The above article was published in September 2004.

Are we slow,
or what? Or maybe the Republicans are just dense, needing something to blow
up and kill 3,000 more people before they decide there is a purpose for the
federal government and it isn't to provide tax cuts to their friends.