lentinman:
Len, you are right in every respect. It makes me real sad to think that people aren't going to wake up until a dirty nuke goes off. The complacency is unreal.
Here is an even more hellish thought than a dirty nuke. Spent rods from nuclear plants are put in cooling pools, for thousands of years, maybe, I don't know. The point is that cooling pools NOT protected by steel walls (or whatever material is used) are very vulnerable to an attack. Such an attack could set off a nuclear fire THAT COULD NOT BE PUT OUT. That is about as scary as it gets, imo--a perpetual stream of nuclear smoke.
The first thing that we should have done after 9/11 was to secure the Canadian and Mexican borders. Mexican border-crossing guards just this year intercepted some Mid-Easterners who were attempting to cross into the U.S. While I think that terrorists probably have crossed into the U.S. from Mexico, I think the far greater problem is the Canadian border. And let's face it, there are terrorists cells in the U.S. right now.
So, instead of immediately securing the borders, what did the goofs in Washington, D.C. do? They created another bureaucratic mess to fight terrorism--The Dept. of Homeland Security. And, after Richard Reid the shoe bomber did his thing, they made feeble, elderly air travelers remove their shoes for inspection at airports. That made be feel VERY secure--The Deparment of Homeland Security and shoe inspections.
I'm being cynical, but you cannot be cynical enough when the security of your country is at risk.
bbotcs