Who cares about nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists?

There have been a number of complaints over the lack of funding the Bush administration's budgets have provided for Nunn-Lugar, the legislation which funds the decommision and destruction of Russian nuclear weapons rather than leaving them lightly guarded and neglected spread throughout Russia. And it is relatively cheap, too.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government is not doing enough to protect nuclear weapons from terrorists and its handling of terrorism suspects is undermining America's image in the Muslim world, members of a commission that investigated the September 11 attacks said on Monday......

"In short, we still do not have a maximum effort against the most urgent threat ... to the American people," he told a news conference, noting that half the nuclear materials in Russia still have no security upgrade.

Fully fund Nunn-Lugar, the most sensible piece of bipartisan legislation that ever passed through Congress. Because if a nuclear bomb goes off, I don't think party affiliation is gonna matter all that much. Interestingly, now that Nunn is gone, it's newer cousin is Nunn-Obama.

***** While I was looking for info on Nunn-Lugar, I came across an old Frontline episode created just after the Soviet Union fell on the topic of Loose Nukes. Two interesting items from that site.

1) Frontline's background interviews on Nunn-Lugar if you're looking for more info.

2) A really interesting training video of the US equivalent of the Russian "suitcase nuke." (bottom) The video isn't great, but it gives you a real idea of the size of these things. (The US 1960's 1 kiloton version looks like it would fit in a child's car seat or baby carriage.)