Moreover, this long-term fiscal time-bomb existed long before George Bush became president, though his tax cuts mean that America will have fewer resources to defuse it.One theory is that this was exactly what the White House intended all along.
And while the bomb exists, and the danger remains of its use or proliferation, it is hard to see how spy agencies, for all their faults, will ever disappear.
Once the powers-that-be found the will to step away from the nuclear precipice, the threat diminished abruptly -- though it will linger as long as the Bomb exists.
Brian Jenkins, a counter-terrorism expert and senior advisor to the president of Rand Corp., said the danger of truck bombs has existed since the 1980s with attacks in Lebanon but have evolved over time.
So far, the government has produced no evidence that a dirty-bomb plot existed, or of Mr. Muhajir's role in one.
The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Bomb Radiation (UNSCEAR) concluded that little evidence, other than the atomic bomb studies, exists to support an association between circulatory disease and radiation in the dose range less than 1-2 Gy.
A ban-the-bomb movement has picked up steam in states that have foresworn nuclear weapons, while strong pro-bomb constituencies exist in nuclear-armed nations.
No public records of the bombing campaign exist, and the former officials said their recollections were in many cases sketchy, and in some cases contradictory.
No uniform statistics on bomb threats exist, he said, but reports suggest that the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks have triggered more threats than before.
All the usual reasons to resist bombing still exist: All those remote wars that leave American soil undisturbed still ravage the territories of the nations on the unhappy receiving end of our engagement, and soak the ground in blood — theirs and ours.
