Remember Pearl Harbor!

Newsday.com has this AP report, by H. Josef Herbert, this morning. It begins:

WASHINGTON -- The country's nuclear weapons plants and sensitive material such as plutonium should be consolidated at a single site to increase security and reduce targets for terrorists, a federal advisory task force says.

[The task force's report] recommended consolidating the most critical parts of the weapons complex, now spread across eight facilities, into a single site with "cutting edge nuclear component production, manufacturing and assembly technologies."

This distribution, once considered a security advantage, now "increases the number of potential terrorist targets within this country, exposing the (weapons) complex and the surrounding civilian population to risk," according to the report.

It noted that when the weapons complex was designed, most of the sites were remote and relatively easy to secure. Today, residential and or commercial communities border most of them.

Who are these people on this task force? Terrorism is not our only potential threat. The problem of having residential and commercial communities bordering on the current facilities can be solved by moving the facilities to more remote sites and preventing community encroachment. Above all, we should not put all our eggs into just one basket.

Today's news also brought this comment from China (full story here):

A Chinese military official says Beijing will use nuclear weapons against the U.S. if the Americans attack the Asian nation in a fight over Taiwan.

So, if we follow the task force's recommendation we'd put all the nuclear production and materials in one remote location, likely in either Nevada or New Mexico. Then, when China's sabre-rattling progresses to actually drawing their weapons over Taiwan, they'll only need one precision missile to obliterate our nuclear capability. Game. Set. Possibly match.

Is anybody in the Bush Administration actually thinking beyond the threat currently in the limelight? Condoleeza Rice is supposed to have a brilliant mind for this kind of threat assessment. I hope she's not too busy as Secretary of State to be still advising the President.