2009.04.20 : Washington, We Have A Serious Problem
"On the current course, nuclear terrorism is inevitable. Indeed, if the United States and other governments keep doing what they are doing today, a nuclear terrorist attack on America is more likely than not in the decade ahead. With a ten-kiloton nuclear weapon stolen from the former Soviet arsenal and delivered to an American city in a cargo container, Al Qaeda can make 9/11 a footnote."
- Graham Allison (founding dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, assistant secretary of defense under Clinton), Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe
Only two brief annotations to this:
- Allison is extremely cool on the Iraq intervention, which he considers A) an enormous distraction from much more critical defense/foreign policy matters; and B) wildly detrimental to our powers of counter-proliferation, as we're now officially the sons-of-bitches who cried wolf. Also, Iraq was way toward the bottom of any short list of likely sources for terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons or materials.
- I do love America. Just imagine sending a political treatise along to Hu Jintao with your best wishes, and see what that gets you. (*)
Though, don't think it hasn't occurred to me I might conceivably earn a friendly visit from the Secret Service this way . . . which I would actually understand, better safe than sorry and all . . .
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