Arab News

NEW YORK, 30 June 2003 — An exhaustive new report released yesterday found US and local governments woefully unprepared to respond to a future attack on American soil.

The study found that police, fire, emergency medical services, public hospitals and health agencies, as well as federal law enforcement agencies need another $98.4 billion in funding to prepare for a possible attack.

“If tomorrow a major WMD, weapons of mass destruction, attack were to take place in a major American city, we are not prepared to deal with it,” former Sen. Warren Rudman, who led the research, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” program.

The study, sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, was conducted by a team of military leaders, former top government officials who examined federal, state and local programs.

They found that the United States needs to spend another $98.4 billion — as much as three times the current amount — to bolster programs to respond to possible chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-impact conventional weapons.

Their research was complicated by the fact that no national standards exist for state and local governments to report their spending or to prioritize their programs.

Estimates of current state and local spending on ranged from $26 billion to as high as $76 billion.

But the panel’s recommendation of nearly $100 billion in additional funds targets programs that are unfunded at any level, and would represent new spending on top of whatever the current amount is.