The threat of terrorism is great and with today's porous borders, someone could bring a biological weapon into our country or sneak a dirty bomb across unmanned portions of our borders.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Americans in all places and levels of government have begun to consider the areas where we need to prepare ourselves from future threats, including the latest weapon: bio-terror.
We have terrorists coming into the country both through our Northern and Southern borders.
If you take the biological weapons in the United States we still will have perhaps a single individual who was able to make anthrax, dry it, and spread it through the mail and cause terror.
I'm absolutely convinced that the threat we face now, the idea of a terrorist in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon, is very real and that we have to use extraordinary measures to deal with it.
Our ports and our borders are the most unprotected fronts in the war on terror.
We need to have a strong defense focused on areas that are in the greatest vulnerability. I have been very concerned about America's 361 seaports as a point in which terrorist activities and materials could be brought into the country.
Although every step must be taken to protect against a chemical or biological attack in America, our nation would survive the use of those weapons as we did when anthrax was mailed to our Capitol and other targets.
Our top focus - protecting our Nation - must go beyond homeland preparedness; America will only be secure if we deal with threats before they happen, not just after they happen.
Border security is a complex issue and will remain a top priority during the 2007 legislative year. As Congress works to fix this problem, I will continue to push for strong measures that beef up security at our borders.
We need to be more careful, but more compassionate. We must strike, not deal with terrorists, but to broaden our understanding of the world outside our borders.