At the Washington Post, Joby Warrick does little more than repeat former senators' Graham and Talent assessment of the US government's preparedness for a terrorist WMD incident. But he does add the reaction of the Obama administration to the assessment.
Within hours of the report's release, the Obama administration revealed plans to fill gaps in the nation's public health defenses with a series of initiatives to be announced in Wednesday's State of the Union address. The proposals, which administration officials said had been in the works well before the report's findings were known, will seek to speed up delivery of drugs in the event of a major attack, addressing one of the principal shortcomings identified by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.
President Obama's speech will include a "call to action" to various government leaders to redesign the way medical countermeasures are mass produced, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said. "The goal is a national capability for the rapid, reliable and affordable production of an array of medical countermeasures against public health threats."
The Obama administration isn't exactly unaware of the threat of bioterrorism, and in a way, it views the threat as seriously as the Bush administration did. Whether that's appropriate or not, well, let's leave that to another day to discuss. But the Obama administration has had its NSC reviewing the former administration's efforts since its 2004 "Biodefense for the 21st Century" strategy, and it released its own intent to build upon that strategy with its own "National Strategy to Counter Biological Threats." And, as Robert Gibbs noted at the White House press brief, Obama isn't exactly new in this area.
And part of what the President will announce tomorrow, of that review that led to the executive order, is to launch an initiative aimed at responding faster and more effectively to those public health threats. All of that -- the administration is proud of the efforts that we've undertaken to put our nation on a far firmer footing in dealing with these.
And understand this -- when it comes to dealing with weapons of mass destruction writ large, particularly nuclear capabilities, going back to the President's time in the Senate -- quite frankly, going back to a relationship that started with Senator Lugar from Indiana prior to being sworn in -- an effort to expand off of the successful Nunn-Lugar program to dispose of nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union to create a program to similarly destroy weapons on the conventional side. And as you know, the President has outlined a plan to get all loose nuclear material contained over a four-year period of time, and in April will host 43 nations in a nuclear security summit in order to make sure that those promises are made real.
I will continue to state that our government's reaction to the threat of CBRN terrorism is way overblown as compared to many other natural disasters and other man-caused accidents and incidents resulting in death in this country. But let's understand that the Obama administration is doing more than the former administration, and certainly the United States is not at any greater risk today than it was a year ago. But I guess Warrick missed that point.
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