Chance of WMD Attack Increases, Bipartisan Panel Reports

The chance the world will witness a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) attack by rogue states or terrorists in the next five years is increasing, warns a bipartisan panel created by the 9-11 Commission.

"In our judgment, America's margin of safety is shrinking, not growing," says the draft report of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism obtained by The Washington Post.

The report, which will be released either today or tomorrow, warns that the greatest threats emanate from Pakistan

 "Were one to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction today, all road would intersect in Pakistan," the report says, according to CQ.com (subscription only). "The risk of nuclear war between [India and Pakistan] is serious, given the ongoing dispute over Kashmir, and the potential for terrorist attacks by Pakistani militant groups to ignite a military confrontation."

As CQ.com reminds readers today, the report was prepared before the Mumbai attacks, which has led to a downward spiral in relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors. The Indian government believes Pakistani nationals, possibly with Pakistani aid, unleashed the daring terrorist assault on Mumbai that killed 179 people, revised upward from 173 by a Mumbai spokesperson, reports ABC News.com.

The sole surviving terrorist captured from the assault told Indian authorities that he belongs to the Kashmiri-Pakistani terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has had ties to Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI. Lashkar-e-Taiba, or Army of the Righteous, fights to restore a rigid Islam to Kashmir, a northern region between India and Pakistan that both claim as part of their territory, and then ultimately to conquer India and convert it to an Islamic nation.

The greatest threats facing the domestic United States, however, may not be nuclear but biological, given the commonality of potential weapon ingredients, the panel warns.

"Because biological hazards such as ingredients in Botox can be used for medical purposes," CQ.com's Adam Graham-Silverman writes, "their preparation as weapons is 'exceedingly difficult to detect,' the report says."

Biohazardous materials can also be stolen or diverted from the many new labs built since 2001 that handle such materials. In mid-October, the Government Accountability Office reported lax perimeter security at two U.S. laboratories that handle the world's deadliest germs and toxins.

The United States can limit the nuclear threat by pressuring Iran and North Korea not to stockpile enriched uranium and plutonium, by toughening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, by expanding the International Atomic Energy Agency's capabilities, and by interdicting nuclear smuggling and trafficking, the panel says.

Regarding U.S.-Pakistani relations, the report recommends the United States continues its military and intelligence cooperation with the terrorist-plagued state, but that it engage in more "soft power" activities to undermine the radical jihadist ideology that led to the attacks of 9-11 and now Mumbai.

CQ.com notes that Obama has called nuclear weapons and materials the greatest national security threat the United States faces and that two of the bipartisan panel's members, Wendy Sherman and Richard Verma, are on his transistion team.

The report about to be released isn't the first time a bipartisan commission has warned the United States about weapons of mass destruction. In a report released on September 11, the Partnership for a Secure America gave the U.S. government a grade of "C" for its attempts to protect the nation from a nuclear terrorism attack.

UPDATE: the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism has released its report. Find it here.