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Sen. Joe Biden: Better Port Security Needed
U.S. Sen. Joe Biden said Wednesday that the Bush administration has misplaced priorities when it comes to protecting American soil. "The thing we have ignored for five years, port security, has to stop," the Democrat from Delaware said after touring Charleston Harbor and meeting with officials to discuss Operation Seahawk. Seahawk is a pilot port security project bringing together almost 50 local, state and federal agencies to assess threats that could enter the country through Charleston. Biden will visit other ports in the coming days and will push in Congress to improve port security. Biden, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, said the administration wants to build a missile defense system.
Story Continues Below But that, he said, "is the least likely threat the United States faces - not according to Joe Biden, but according to our Defense Department." The more likely threat, he said, is a dirty bomb, a homemade nuclear weapon or "vile of sarin gas or biological weapon in a backpack crossing from Vancouver to Seattle." Biden said if the nation forgoes for only one year the federal tax cut for Americans whose income exceeds $1 million a year, it would more than pay for the security recommendations in the 9/11 Commission report. Charleston, "has probably one of the most sophisticated, integrated port security arrangements of any port in the country" and is a model for the rest of the nation, Biden said. The senator said he would like to see containers coming into this nation checked with both gamma rays and X-rays before leaving foreign docks. He added he will become a familiar figure in the state as the 2008 campaign heats up in the coming months. "I plan on coming back to South Carolina frequently to find out whether anybody but me thinks I should be president," he said. Biden already has a tie to the state. He gave the eulogy at Strom Thurmond's 2003 funeral.
"It has amazed me, how many people - scores of people and a number of leading African-Americans - who have thanked me for doing Strom's eulogy," Biden said. Biden said he got into politics in part because he opposed everything Thurmond, a one-time segregationist, represented. "I watched Strom change over the years and we became very good friends," he said. "I wanted to be honest at the eulogy. I tried to do that and say what I thought he was and what he became." "I don't know what impact it will have" on voters, Biden said. "But I hope it demonstrates I have an understanding of the complexities of states like yours and mine and how we have grown and matured.
© 2006 Associated Press.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: Inside Cover Stories
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