The Graham-Talent comedy show has an open invitation to the House and Senate homeland security committees. It must be a nice benefit of being former senators, that you can just drop into these hearings and get away with saying the most ridiculous things. Last week, the two prophets of doom were at the House Committee on Homeland Security, preaching their usual line - "we're all going to die from biological agents unless you provide billions for the bioterrorism industry!" Really, you have to read their testimony to believe the truly sensationalistic crap they are spouting.
The failures did not begin with the current group of leaders. Each of the last three Administrations has been slow to recognize and respond to the biothreat. The difference is that the danger has grown to the point that we no longer have the luxury of a slow learning curve. The clock is ticking, and time is running out. [This "danger" is based on subjective assessments of the availability and access to biological materials and technology, not any actual intelligence indicators]
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So, while it is certainly possible for terrorist groups to get a nuclear weapon, it is less difficult for them to develop and disperse a bio-weapon. There may be even fewer barriers for terrorist groups with close ties to those nation states which are accumulating both the materials and scientific capability for weaponization. All of the ingredients are in place for a biological weapon to be in the hands of a terrorist organization, which is subject to none of the international law constraints and retaliatory consequences which might impede a nation state from its use. [This is utter rot. There are both international constraints and deterrence approaches in place today]None of this is speculation. Al Qaeda was well down the road to producing such weapons prior to 9/11. Due to the ease in creating a clandestine production capability, our intelligence community had no knowledge of two such facilities in Afghanistan prior to their capture by U.S. troops and a separate, but parallel bioweapons development program al Qaeda ran in Malaysia. Facilities with more sophisticated equipment than those found could be in operation today without our knowledge. [Utter bullshit and unwarranted speculation]
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Consider this scenario: a team of engineers sympathetic to al Qaeda bring a seed culture of anthrax spores to the U.S. from an overseas laboratory. ... In the following weeks, 13,000 people die. The city may need to be cleaned up so that people can safely enter the downtown area, at a cost of billions of dollars. And as tragic as this event could be, the terrorists remain at large, free to commit the same murder twice. ... Unfortunately, this scenario is not considered ‘worst-case’ or unrealistic, but it is in fact the National Planning Scenario for a biological attack. It was released 5 years ago this month. Five years—the clock is ticking, and we are not prepared. [This was and continues to be a really stupid approach to plan or critique resource allocation]
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...anthrax vaccine could and should be available to first responders, and we agree with the Committee that the government should seriously review the issue of whether and under what conditions home MedKits should be available for concerned citizens who wish to prepare themselves and their families. [Worst Idea Ever]
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THE CLOCK IS TICKING
We cannot overstate the urgency of this crisis, and the need for action, now. The international situation is fragile, with Israel and its neighbors, on the India-Pakistan border, and this fragility substantially increases the risk of terrorism with a WMD. While there are issues at stake that have gone unresolved for over 60 years, we may have only 3 more years of procrastination before the consequences reveal not a World at Risk, but a world immobilized by crisis. [Oh noes!! but then again, what happens when the clock alarm goes off in 2013, and nothing has happened? Can we retire these two clowns then?]
The frightening thing is that there appears to be a "WMD Prevention and Protection Act of 2010" either being proposed or prepared for debate (and by "WMD", they mean "biological threats"). Not clear to me if this is a product of the committee or of the fevered imaginations of the Graham-Talent comedy team. But in looking at the details, at least the proposed legislation only goes after DHS, DHHS, DoJ, DoS, and the intel community, leaving DOD out of the impact area. I mean, how crazy would it be if there were some foolish policy makers in OSD who were suggesting that DOD ought to be the lead federal agency to address the Obama administration's "Countering Biological Threats" strategy? That would just be insane.
And as a final note, I'd like the Indo-Asian News Service to please, please disregard Bob Graham's ridiculous statement that, in the event of heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, the Pakistani goverment might deliberately allow the Taliban access to its nuclear weapons so that a nuclear terrorist incident might happen in India. He's really not a "top US non-proliferation expert." He's just a foolish, old man who has way too much time on his hands.
who's paying him to spout his fever dreams?
Posted by: merl | 29 April 2010 at 12:29 PM