Nunn: Terrorists winning the race to acquire nuclear weapon

[sabra]

<<SNIP>>
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/politics/11997959.htm

Nunn: Terrorists winning the race to acquire nuclear weapon

JEFFREY McMURRAY

Associated Press


WASHINGTON - The U.S. government is losing the battle to keep the world's most dangerous weapons away from terrorists largely because of its failure to monitor nuclear materials at the source, former Sen. Sam Nunn said Monday.

"We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe, and the threat is outrunning our response," said Nunn, D-Ga., a former Senate Armed Services chairman who now leads the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a group that promotes nonproliferation issues.

Nunn's comments came as part of a public discussion following up on the recommendations made a year ago by an independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Although the government has enacted about half the recommendations - including creation of a national intelligence czar, Nunn said it has largely ignored those concerning the need to find, catalog and destroy plutonium and uranium. "Cradle-to-grave" monitoring of these materials is perhaps the most critical component of the war on terror, he said.

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[Beetwasher]

1. Bushco. Doesn't Care. Odds Are They'd Set it off in NY

and that's fine w/ them. It would give them an excuse to nuke Iran, which they're just itchin' to do.

[VegasWolf]

4. If they nuke Iran, the oil will be ruined. Won't happen. nt

[Beetwasher]

5. Eh?

You can nuke a city w/out ruining all the oil in an entire country...

[Lerkfish]

6. what do you think the Depleted Uranium shells and bullets are doing?

They seem to have no problem using those, and they are contaminating the whole area of Iraq with dangerous radiogicals, right now as we speak.

You think they care?

[mom cat]

10. If a dirty bomb goes off in New York City, I will know no to suspect!

[Frederik]

2. I honestly don't think they care

Actually, I think they want it to happen. They want nothing more than a nuclear war.

[Tempest]

3. Bush cut funding to monitoring program

Bush cut the funding back in 2001.

[AndyTiedye]

7. Nukes Were What Valerie Plame and Her Organization Used to Be Looking For

until Karl or Bigus Dickus or someone at or around that level
blew the whole organization's cover.

Now we don't know squat about who's selling what to whom, because it
takes years to set up that kind of organizaton, even though it only
took the regime a few minutes to blow it away.

One needs to ask why. That seems a bit heavyweight for a bit of
political retribution -- the consequences are far too dire --
unless those consequences were the intent in the first place.


If they are planning another
MIHOP this time with :nuke::nuke::nuke:
they would have every reason to want Valerie Plame's team out of the way.

[endarkenment]

8. Sam Nunn?

Gak! I thought he had expired already. Nunn is hardcore hardline cold warrior, he pre-dates the neocons but he definitely is one. Everything he says is suspect and needs to be understood in the context of whatever wardrum he is currently beating. Iran?

[cosmicdot]

11. thank you for mentioning this

I agree that what "he says is suspect and needs to be understood in ... context".

It seems similar to "Brzezinski Alleges Incompetence in Iraq Effort" (Saturday, June 25, 2005) ... as one DUer suggested: "It seems like the imperialists are arguing about the best course..." and, another noting that Brzezinski's "just mad at Bush for messing up the war & our world game". Brznezinski authored, "“The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives”.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1887232

Sam Nunn rubs elbows and sits at the same tables of power with the major players controlling things ... from being on the International Advisory Board of Barrick Gold to being chairman of the board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (a foreign policy think tank having such trustees as Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, R. James Woolsey and Brent Scowcroft) to having worked for the law firm of King & Spalding (google King & Spalding + enron).

He is a board member of ChevronTexaco Corporation, Coca-Cola, Dell, General Electric, Internet Security Systems, Inc., and Scientific-Atlanta, Inc. He's a Senior Advisor to RRE, an investment firm.

He's a Board member of The Concord Coalition founded by Pete G. Peterson, head The Blackstone Group (Carlyle Group's mirror private equity firm) and Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Nunn was selected to act the role of 'president' in Dark Winter, a simulated terrorist attack on three American cities using weaponized smallpox, conducted June 22-23, 2001.

[maddezmom]

9. Experts say US complacent on nuclear terror threat

By David Morgan
18 minutes ago



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration and the U.S. Congress are showing signs of complacency about the threat of a terrorist nuclear attack that could cripple a major city and shatter the economy, nuclear security experts said on Monday.

~snip~
We said on the 9/11 commission that there needed to be maximum effort and a sense of urgency. The sense of urgency is more a mood of complacency today," said former commissioner Timothy Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana.

"Rather than a brisk pace of activity, we are more seeing a business-as-usual approach," he said.

Panel members including former Sen. Sam Nunn, a Democrat who once chaired the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, worried about the pace of efforts to secure nuclear stockpiles that are often poorly guarded in 40 countries, including former Soviet states.

more:http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050627/ts_nm/security_nuclear_dc_2

[flaminbats]

12. one reason Sam Nunn is now a political artifact..

if either party nominated Nunn for political office after 9/11, and he expressed these concerns about national security during the campaign, all voters would be too freaked to support him.

[daleo]

13. Terrorists control nuclear weapons already.

They are known as the Bush family.