Mitch Landrieu: “I want to quote a few sentences from this beautifully written piece. He says: The terrorists who planned and carried out…”

“I want to quote a few sentences from this beautifully written piece. He says: The terrorists who planned and carried out the attacks of Sept. 11 showed there is no limit to the number of innocent lives they are willing to take. Their capacity for killing was restricted only by the power of their weapons. Though we may not yet know with certainty which group sponsored these attacks, we do know that Osama bin Laden declared in 1998 that acquiring weapons of mass destruction is ``a religious duty.'' This statement should not be taken lightly. We have had a look at the face of terrorist warfare in the 21st century, and it gives us little hope that if these groups gained control of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons they would not hesitate to use them. As America prepares a response, we must build a new framework for national security that protects us from the full range of the new dangers we face. Mr. President, we cannot, we should not try, it would be foolhardy to begin to try to build this framework without a strong partnership with Russia. We know of nearly 400 incidents to purchase or smuggle this material since the end of the cold war. We can safely assume that for every purchase or smuggling operation we stopped--and we stopped many--others succeeded. Yet the technology and framework for locking down these stockpiles is within our grasp. Today we fund the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program at $403 million a year.…”