Chuck Schumer: “Mr. President, if you think of all the terrible things that terrorists could do to us--and there are so many you almost…”

“Mr. President, if you think of all the terrible things that terrorists could do to us--and there are so many you almost run out of mental space thinking about them--perhaps the worst that I can imagine is that a nuclear weapon, and I am not talking about a dirty bomb, which would be bad enough, but a real nuclear weapon would be smuggled into this country and exploded anywhere in the country, but particularly in one of our large cities. The damage would be unimaginable. It is guessed if it were even a 10-kiloton device--smaller than the devices that were exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki--that over 100,000 people would die immediately, hundreds of thousands more in the next month, and then perhaps even millions over the years from the radiation. The economic loss would be incredible, not just in the city where it was exploded but wherever the wind currents blew in terms of where the radiation blew. It would probably, in many ways, change the way of life that we cherish for every American, no matter in what part of the country you lived. So it seems to me we should be doing everything we can to prevent a nuclear weapon from being exploded here.”