Bush's Dirty Nuclear Bomb

by Alexander Cockburn

In the normal order of business, suspected gangbangers don't have much purchase on the Bill of Rights. Their rights of assembly, and protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, were curtailed long since. Padilla's current status could foreshadow a trend. Pending challenge in the courts, he's classed as an "enemy combatant," locked up in a navy brig in Charleston, S.C., with no rights at all.

Tuesday, June 11, all the way from Moscow, Attorney General Ashcroft fostered the impression that Padilla/Muhajir had been foiled pretty much in the act of planting radioactive material taped to TNT in the basement of the Sears Building or the Commodities Exchange or the Field Museum or some kindred monument of Chicago. "U.S.: 'Dirty Bomb' Plot Foiled" exulted USA Today.

Wednesday brought us a modified climb-down. "Threat of 'dirty bomb' softened" muttered USA Today's main head. It turned out Muhajir had ten grand in cash and maybe big dreams, but nothing in the way of radioactive dirt or even TNT. Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told the press, "I don't think there was actually a plot beyond some fairly loose talk." He should know. Nameless administration officials dumped on Ashcroft for grandstanding.

But at least we're now sensitized to the "dirty bomb" menace. USA Today (which has the advantage of being a Friedman-free zone) ran an exciting graphic put together by the Federation of American Scientists displaying the long-term effects of 10 pounds of TNT wrapped around a "pea-size" piece of cesium 137 from a medical gauge being exploded at the National Gallery of Art.

Anyone standing within three blocks downwind from the Gallery would stand a one-in-a thousand chance of getting cancer, An easterly breeze would put the Capitol within this radius.

We should be worried about this? I'd say it comes pretty low on the list of Major Concerns. Now suppose al Qaeda was to plan something really nasty, like shipping spent nuclear fuels by rail from every quarter of the United States to a fissured mountain in Nevada not that far from one of America's prime tourist destinations?

That's the Bush plan, of course. The House has voted aye. It now awaits approval by the U.S. Senate. You can check out your own proximity to the contemplated nuclear shipping routes by going to www.mapscience.org, put together by a public interest group.

Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Mo., and Salt Lake City will become hubs for the nuclear fuel shipments. Take Illinois; 1,063 schools will be within one mile of rail, barge and highway routes proposed by the Department of Energy. The White House is 1.1 miles from Union Station, through which shipments are expected to pass on the journey to Yucca Mountain.

But the scheduled Yucca Mountain nuclear dump is part of terror-as-normalcy, part of our domestic furniture.

What a gift to the powers-that-be the War on Terror is turning out to be a subject changer. Right now, across the United States from New York state to Oregon and Washington, the final cut-offs for people on welfare are looming up. The guillotine blade ratcheted into position by Clinton's welfare reform of 1996 is plummeting down.

Take Oregon. It has a terrible recession, the worst unemployment rate in the country and the largest deficit in the state's history. Back in 1979, according to the Oregon Center for Public Policy, 39 percent of poor Oregonians were getting public assistance. These days, the percentage is below 10 percent.

Does that mean that the previously destitute are now in regular jobs? No. It just means you have to be a lot poorer to get any sort of handout. It means the usual story: Exhausted mothers scrabbling for petty cash, doing occasional starvation-wage work. Over the first 14 months of the current recession, eight Oregon counties had their combined unemployment grow by 92 percent. At the same time, the number of welfare recipients went down by 16 percent.

This is the Terrorism of Everyday Life, at the most elemental level, aimed at the weakest in our midst: no money for food, for shelter, for the kids, and a president who actually wants to stiffen the work requirements. Thus do we nourish the next generation of Enemy Combatants on the home front.