NewsMax.com
Thursday, Feb. 1, 2001

According to the Associated Press, the United States Commission on National Security/21st Century, chaired by former Sens. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., and Gary Hart, D-Colo., reported Wednesday that:

"Weapons proliferation [and] the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack.

"A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century."

The 14-member panel listed as a close-second threat what it described as the nation's inadequate scientific research and education.

The nation's entire education system, it said, is "in serious crisis."

It warned that this actually poses "a greater threat to U.S. national security ... than any potential conventional war that we might imagine."

One commission member, Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, said:

"We put science, and science and math education, second ... because we believe it's second only to the threat of a weapon of mass destruction [hitting] one of our cities."

The panel concluded the United States is not prepared adequately to meet either of those challenges:

"The risk is not only death and destruction but also a demoralization that could undermine [America's] global leadership.

"In the face of this threat, our nation has no coherent or integrated governmental structures."

It offered these steps the United States should take:

• Assign the National Guard primary responsibility for domestic security and reorganize, train and equip it to undertake that mission.

• Overhaul the Defense Department, where excessive laws have hobbled weapons acquisition and the failure to privatize some support activities "wastes huge sums of money."

• Reduce by up to 15 percent the staffs of the defense secretary, Joint Chiefs of Staff and regional commands, where growth has "created mounting confusion and delay."

• Create an independent National Homeland Security Agency.

• Pattern it along the lines of the current Federal Emergency Management Agency.

• Assign it responsibility to protect American lives and infrastructure, such as the highway system and information technology, and to plan, coordinate and integrate domestic security activities.

• Reorganize the State Department, a "crippled institution that is starved for resources by Congress" and weakened further by many of its core functions, such as foreign assistance, being parceled out to other agencies.

• Double spending on scientific research and development over the next seven to eight years.

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