Want to buy or steal a guided missile?

[ray of light]

Excellent diary here that everyone should see!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/26/828/10583

[ray of light]

1. History of Bush/Republicans refusal to guard the weapons

Via Kerry at Condi's nomination:

despite the failure to guard ammo dumps, the weapons of which are now being turned on our troops, despite the failure to guard nuclear facilities, when after all the purpose of the invasion was to deal with weapons of mass destruction, despite the inability to deliver services immediately, despite the security level that we have today, you sat there this morning and suggested it was the right number of troops, contrary to the advice of most thoughtful people who have been analyzing this.

And this too:

I’m reading from an article on December 15, which says, by David Rupee (ph), “Invoking comments by then presidential candidate Senator Kerry, a senior Energy Department official said yesterday that the Bush administration would defy critics and finish securing 600 tons of Russian nuclear weapons materials by 2008.” It goes on to explain a distinction between sites and tons and how they’re going to try to do it.

So I’m glad that some people heard what we were talking about, but in a debate with the president we were both asked, I think it might have been by Bob Schaeffer, what we thought the most important issue was, and I answered nuclear proliferation globally and the president agreed.

Now, this was in 2004 that the president agreed that this was the most pressing issue globally and nationally to our security. And yet the fact is that by the end of this year we will have secured maybe 46 percent of the material that’s out there and 70 percent of the sites. The fact is also that this administration has requested less money than the Clinton administration did in its last year. And each year this administration has either cut or flatlined the money for this enterprise.

In 2002, the administration unveiled its G-8 global partnership against weapons of mass destruction, pledging to spend $10 billion. But if you look at what was then being spent, it was about a billion dollar a year. In effect, that was $10 billion over the next 10 years, same amount of money. No additional commitment of funds to the most significant threat the country faces. Now, a number of years ago I remember a suitcase was captured, I think it was in Amman, at the airport, with something like 250 grams of radioactive material, and the sale was several hundreds of millions of dollars on the black market. That’s the suitcase we caught. As a former prosecutor, you always wonder about the suitcases you don’t catch and the people you don’t catch. No threat has been greater to us, according to I think everybody, than the potential of a dirty bomb and the threat of terrorists securing these materials, and you explained earlier about the sort of marketing of this process.

You know, I don’t say this as a matter of politics at all but just as a matter of common sense. I don’t understand how the administration can choose to spend now we’re going to be close to $300 billion in Iraq to disarm weapons that weren’t there and yet $1 billion a year to secure weapons that we know are there potentially, because every fissional site is a potential weapon, real, ascertainable, tangible.

So my question to you is there are a series of steps that could be taken very simply as a matter of common sense for the United States of America to lead the world, as we ought to, with respect to proliferation. One is accelerating even further this securing of sites. That material is subject to theft, some of it poorly guarded by people who are poorly paid. It is insecure. Senator Lugar and Senator Nunn and others put enormous energy into this effort. And the administration even allowed money to be cut at one point with respect to this effort. That hardly defines a serious commitment. So, one, will the administration, will you press for a global effort that meets the seriousness of the threat and that puts the United States back in the position of leadership with respect to securing fissional material that we know is there?