Citizens to Stop Nuclear Terrorism

YOUR RESPONSE COUNTS.
HERE'S WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Critical times call for White House czar on WMD

Post sits empty despite Bush's security pledge

- Op-Ed by Edmund Rennolds, special to the Washington Times

"While our political and military leaders are focused on the war in Iraq and the media seems increasingly obsessed by trivia, there exists out there a clear and present threat not only to our security but to our entire way of life. The threat is that of nuclear terrorism and we need to ask today questions that the public would ask the day after an attack. How could this be possible? How could it be allowed to happen? What could have been done to prevent it?

"A nuclear attack as an act of terrorist aggression would make 9/11 look like the most innocent of dress rehearsals. The danger is clear and present and potentially cataclysmic. We have been warned. It is time to wake up."

- Dr. Liam Fox, Conservative Party Member of Parliament, UK

"That a small group of stateless terrorists could destroy New York or Washington with a black market nuclear bomb epitomizes just how much the world has changed – and how urgent it is that we lead other nations with a comprehensive global plan to lock down all of the world's fissionable material. Quickly. Before terrorists get their hands on a nuclear bomb."

- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson

THOUGHTS

THE UNTHINKABLE

If 9/11 proved anything to America, it's that the terrorists mean it. But the lesson has not yet been learned fully.

It's dangerous for Americans to assume that nuclear weapons and materials around the world are secured in vaults, guarded day and night, beyond the reach of those who would use them without conscience or fear of death. They are not.

The mission of Citizens to Stop Nuclear Terrorism is to ensure that nuclear weapons and nuclear materials worldwide are locked away safely. CSNT is working diligently to raise public awareness of the threat of a nuclear 9/11 and with members of Congress to take steps to prevent the unthinkable. The United States, the target of history's most devastating terrorist attack, must do whatever is necessary to avert a catastrophe that doesn't have to happen.

"Nuclear terrorism remains a real and urgent danger," said a report prepared by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, "Securing the Bomb 2007." "Terrorists are actively seeking nuclear weapons and the materials to make them. With enough plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU), a sophisticated and well-organized terrorist group could potentially make at least a crude nuclear bomb that could incinerate the heart of any major city."

CSNT embraces that report's chief recommendations to thwart a nuclear terrorist strike against the United States or its allies, namely:

A U.S.-led global campaign "to lock down every nuclear weapon and every significant cache of potential nuclear bomb material worldwide" as rapidly as possible.
Create effective nuclear security standards worldwide.
Remove weapons-usable material from the world's most vulnerable sites as rapidly as possible.

The 9/11 terrorists didn't have access to nuclear materials. Others might, unless the world acts now to lock them down.