More than 760,000 Pan Am flights 103. Spencer Ackerman has more:

How could this have happened? Insufficient military personnel and sustained attention, certainly. But that doesn't explain why the administration didn't devote critical resources to such a dire problem. One likely explanation is ideology. As Bill Keller described in a 2003 article on nuclear proliferation, the Bush administration worries far more about the character of regimes that possess dangerous weapons than about the danger posed by the weapons themselves. That explains, for example, why the administration didn't make securing Russian nuclear material a tier-one priority even after September 11, but turned its counterproliferation attention (such as it is) to Baghdad. I'm not suggesting that the administration consciously chose not to guard Al Qaqaa. But with a national-security outlook that boils down to "no dangerous regime, no danger," it's hardly surprising that securing munitions sites would fall to what one administration official told The New York Times was a "medium priority"--particularly in the triumphal moments of spring 2003, when the administration was mistakenly gloating about a successful war. (It's the same focus on the centrality of states that leads the administration to misunderstand the war on terror.)

In other words, it's not just an intent question. It's also a capabilities and supply question, which the Bush administration has discounted -- allowing the AQ Khans to go essentially unpunished, the Russian nuclear stockpiles, and post-Saddam Iraq stockpiles to go unsecured -- to our mortal danger.

[Thx to D for the staggering math correction -- Kansas public schools, etc..]

Posted by Laura at October 25, 2004 01:47 PM