James Norton: “I sat in a committee that I must say tries and often is bipartisan. I kept looking for gravitas of the 9/11…”

“I sat in a committee that I must say tries and often is bipartisan. I kept looking for gravitas of the 9/11 recommendations. One that is not here actually stunned me and that is the recommendation to strengthen our counternuclear proliferation efforts. During the first Presidential debate there was a moment of rare agreement between Kerry and Bush. They both said that nuclear proliferation was the single most serious threat facing the United States. The commission agreed. It says that al Qaeda has tried to acquire or make nuclear weapons for the last 10 years and that the maximum effort should be made. H.R. 10 relegates this issue to a study. A study is a way not to do anything. The Senate knew exactly what to do. You do not study it any more. You expand the proliferation security initiative and the proliferation programs literally on the books now. I represent this city. What a small nuclear device would do to the Nation's capital I do not want to contemplate. The commission understands what nuclear weapons would do nation-wide. No serious effort can exclude nuclear nonproliferation.”