Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Nuclear threat ignored

Tuesday, May 7, 2002 | 8:44 a.m.

WHAT DOES every terrorist who hates America want?

You guessed it, his own nuclear bomb. And where's he going to get it? You may have guessed right again if you said one of the thousands of trainloads and truckloads that President George W. Bush wants to send across this country to a site near Las Vegas for "safe storage."

But, if you guessed that our nation's nuclear facilities would be the place for the bad guys to pick up their radioactive "starter kits" you would be wrong because they are the places that our president has promised to keep secure. Right? Not really.

I don't know who was thinking what, or if they were even thinking at all, but President Bush's response to his energy secretary's request for $379 million -- for a "critical down payment to the safety and security of our nation and its people" -- was to slash this essential money by 93 percent. Presumably, this and other cuts have been made to stem the red ink in the president's budget this year because the country is not going to like $100 million-plus deficits after having spent the last decade of the 20th century fighting our way into the black and all the prosperity that comes with such an exercise.

Personally, I don't have a big problem sinking into the red ink when it comes to paying for war and other needed "security" issues that plague our country from time to time. That's what normal Americans do when push comes to shove and they need to shove a little.

As an aside, that's why I am still so befuddled at the reaction in this state to our senators' request for a few million dollars to fight this Yucca Mountain thing. Now's the time to find the money to pay for the fight, not listen to a million excuses why we can't do it. You would think from their negative reaction to such a request that most of the business community and gaming industry really don't care what happens to us and we all know that's not true, don't we?

But, back to the budget for now. The American people will pay whatever they have to if the fight to defeat terrorism requires it. We will even pay an extra $379 million to keep our nuclear facilities safe from terrorist efforts to steal plutonium and other bomb-making ingredients or, God forbid, to prevent a direct attack on a nuclear power plant. But, it appears, no one has asked us how we want to spend our money, mostly, I suppose, because we take the president at his word that "nothing is more important than the national security of our country. Nothing is more important."

Apparently, the budget is.

Now I didn't come upon this view completely on my own. In fact, I was struck that a woman with whom I rarely agree, Arianna Huffington, opined on this very subject just a few days ago. Here's a little of what she said on the subject: "We know from the diagrams, computers, and 'Jihad for Dummies' manuals found in the bombed out caves of Tora Bora and Mazar-e-Sharif that the madmen of al-Qaida have their black hearts set on unleashing weapons of mass destruction on the people of America -- and would love nothing better than turning our own nuclear materials against us.

"The vast amounts of nuclear weapons and radioactive waste stored at Energy Department facilities are enough to make a terrorist's mouth water but, evidently, not enough to stay the red pens of Mitch Daniels and the ruthless number-crunchers in the White House's Office of Management and Budget, who clearly have a very different definition of homeland security than the rest of us.

"The Bush administration has been shameless in its willingness to play the national security trump card to promote the things it most cherishes -- from tax cuts to drilling in ANWR to the drug war to subsidies for corporate fat cats. So it's more than a little ironic that when it comes to doing something that will actually protect us, the president is suddenly unwilling to put our money where his mouth is."

The one-time "darling of the right" continues at length to describe her disbelief in President Bush's actions and her discontent about the direction he seems to be taking us in our effort to secure our homeland. After comparing the sieve-like quality of our nuclear security to the clearly penetrable nature of our airport security pre-9/11, she asks, "Are we going to have to wait until we have a nuclear 9/11 before our leaders do all that they can to protect our nuclear sites?"

And, then, the capper. "It's not like we're talking about an outrageous amount of money: $379 million to keep the ingredients of nuclear devastation out of the hands of mass murderers. That's only a few million more than the $250 million rebate the president's beloved rollback of the alternative minimum corporate tax would have given to Enron alone. And it pales beside the billions Bush wants for Star Wars."

Those are Arianna's words not mine. But I wish I was smart enough to have said them first. I find the whole thing incredible, illogical, unfathomable and irresponsible in light of the knowledge that every bad man and his brother wants to whack us.

It is not the economy, Mr. President. It is homeland security.