It's the border, stupid!

Here is an excerpt from Michael Scheuer's new book, "Marching Toward Hell", a well-titled work if ever there was one. Mr. Scheuer is a 20-some year veteran of the CIA, virtually all of those years in Muslim countries.

"One can agree or disagree about whether al-Queda has a nuclear device, as well as about whether it would know how to detonate one, but it is impossible to argue that bin Laden is not pursuing such a weapon or that al-Queda would not use it if acquired. And yet that is exactly how the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations have behaved. They have not been bashful about warning Americans about this possibility, but twelve years after bin Laden declared war, and six plus years after 9/11, U.S. borders remain porous to the point of being wide open. Instead of seeing border control as perhaps the single most vital element of homeland security, our governing elite have turned it into a political issue with which to court Hispanic voters, a tactic that can only be seen as meaning our leaders value their offices more than the lives of Americans. More disastrously, sixteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the three post-1988 U.S. presidential administrations have failed to push to conclusion the U.S.- Russian program to secure the 22,000 nuclear devices that form the former USSR's nuclear arsenal. The Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, in fact, have cut funding and manpower for the program. Open borders and unaccounted for nuclear devices are a dangerous combination, especially because al-Queda and America's other enemies have been on the trail of the latter since 1992."

-Page 74, 2nd paragraph, "Marching Towards Hell" by Michael Scheuer, copyright 2008

My two cents: None of the major presidential candidates stand for border security, which is tantamount to national security in this age of terrorism and portable nukes. Fortunately for us, bin Laden must get prior permission from a cadre of Islamic clerics before he kills more than 10,000,000 Americans. That's a relief.