A recent AP article reports that if a dirty bomb—one designed to spread radioactive contamination—went off in a major city exposing 100,000 people to radioactive material, it would take four years to test everyone because there are so few laboratories qualified to do so, and the available tests cover only six out of 13 of the isotopes that might be used.
Excuse me, but wasn’t one of the main reasons for invading Iraq that the White House was worried about nuclear terrorism? And that was five years ago; shouldn’t practical preparations for dealing with that worst-case scenario have been in place by now?
As Rep. Brad Miller (D, NC) told AP, it would be nice to think that since 9/11 “our government had smart people lying awake at 3 o’clock in the morning, trying to think through everything that terrorists could be dreaming of, every kind of attack they could be dreaming of, and trying to think of ways to prevent it and to respond to it if it does happen.”
Apparently they weren’t.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 8:44 am and is filed under Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.