Countering the growing danger of the terrorist threat requires significantly stepping up U.S. efforts. The government must immediately take steps to reinvigorate the collection of intelligence about terrorists' plans, use of all available legal avenues to disrupt and prosecute terrorist activities and private sources of support, convince other nations to cease all support for terrorists, and ensure that federal, state, and local officials are prepared for attacks that may result in mass casualties. The government must do more to prepare for such an event. The President and Congress should determine whether additional legal authority is needed to deal with catastrophic terrorism. Terrorists with biological weapons, mentioned in the Executive Summary above, pose a particularly troubling problem.
Most experts agree that the U.S. is very poorly prepared to handle bio-terrorism.
The majority of the focus in the past has been placed on terrorists use of chemical weapons rather than biological weapons, so any effective responses to such an attack are still in the developmental stages. The government has begun to take more measures to combat bio-terrorism, but more funding is necessary. There are some who believe that until the United States decides to treat the war with terrorists as a war, it can never effectively combat terrorism. When the enemy does not fight fair and deploy tanks, ships and aircraft, we find ourselves punching thin air. We have prepared to fight machines.