The bloody events in Mumbai, India served as a jolting reminder to the world — and particularly to the U.S. — that terrorists can strike suddenly, in many places, in many ways and using various techniques. And a new report now makes a grim forecast: the United States is likely to be hit by a terrorist biological or nuclear attack by 2013.

The report will be delivered by members of Congress today to President George Bush.

So the questions now become: is the U.S. ready? And can it cope?

The bad news: reports so far suggest the U.S. is woefully behind schedule. The good news: there are signs the incoming Obama administration is putting this issue on its front burner.

The report is not just a warning to the U.S., either: it sounds the alarm for major cities all over the world. The BBC notes:

The chance of a nuclear or biological attack on a major world city in the next five years is now much greater, a report has warned.

A commission set up by the US Congress is due to reveal that America’s “margin of safety” is shrinking, not growing.

One of the report’s authors says enemies of the US are moving quickly to gain weapons of mass destruction.

And what country is the weakest link? It begins with “P”…

The report, entitled World at Risk, singles out Pakistan as the weakest link in world security.

“Were one to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction today, all roads would intersect in Pakistan,” the report says.

The bi-partisan Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism was set up after the attacks of 11 September 2001.

But new reports indicate President Elect Barack Obama is planning to focus on this issue and is going to set up the bureaucratic machinery to do so:

President-elect Obama is expected to establish a White House-level post to address the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Boston Globe reports the office will “coordinate efforts to prevent terrorists from obtaining nuclear or biological weapons,” giving “the highest priority to thwarting a catastrophic attack that a bipartisan panel warns could come in the next five years.”

The Boston Globe:

Naming a top deputy whose sole mission is to oversee the government’s wide-ranging programs to stop such an attack would mark a significant break with the Bush administration, which in resisting such a post has maintained that US efforts to reduce nuclear stockpiles and safeguard deadly pathogens are adequate.

A law requiring the position, passed by Congress more than a year ago and signed into law by President Bush, has been ignored for more than 15 months, in part because Bush opposes giving the Senate the power to confirm the official.

But Obama, whose first foreign trip as a US senator was to assess initiatives to lock down nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, believes the programs lack coordination, are underfunded, and need a top official supervising them, according to three advisers with knowledge of the transition team’s deliberations.

Now the question is surfacing: is the United States ready to cope with the aftermath of a new style of terrorism that would suddenly hit a major city and cause not just destruction, but horror at a new form of mass murder?ABC News reports that the United States may have a ways to go:

The recent report revealing a likely biological or nuclear terror attack on the United States by 2013 has left some national security experts questioning what, if anything, a government plan to station 15,000 military troops inside the United States might do to counteract a domestic catastrophe.

The report, released by the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, determined that, because of the availability of biological weapons and, to a lesser extent, the distribution of nuclear material, “it is more likely than not” that an attack on the United States using a weapon of mass destruction will occur in the next five years.

A representative for the U.S. Northern Command told ABCNews.com that 15,000 trained military troops will be stationed inside the United States by 2011, ready to respond to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosive incidents.

“These troops are not designed to be first responders,” said spokesman Mike Kucharek. “They are designed to be in place to supplement the state and local efforts.”

Of the 15,000 troops, Kucharek said that 5,000 will be active-duty troops and the remaining 10,000 will be a combination of reserve forces and National Guard.

Several national security experts told ABCNews.com that they applaud the military’s plan to ready the country against what they say is an inevitable terrorist attack. But others voiced concern that having an active brigade within the United States would increase the possibility of a police state and may even violate the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law designed to limit the U.S. government’s use of the military for domestic law enforcement purposes

.
The Press Trust of India noted the danger posed by India’s longtime rival and nemesis Pakistan in the increasingly grim international terrorism scenario:

Terming Pakistan more dangerous than Iran due to its possession of nuclear technology, a US Congressional Commission said the country could be an “unwitting source of a terrorist attack on the US,” possibly using weapons of mass destruction.

“Were one to map terrorism and WMD today, all roads would intersect in Pakistan. Pakistan is our ally but there is a grave danger it could also be an unwitting source of a terrorist attack on the US, possibly with WMD,” the panel report said.

The rapid spread of nuclear technology in countries like Pakistan and Iran are seen as the main dangers with Islamabad seen as perhaps the most dangerous of them all.

The odds that terrorists will soon strike a major city with nuclear or biological weapons are now higher than ever, the top US panel has said, identifying Pakistan as an area of “grave concern” due to terror networks and its atomic arsenal.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has urged Pakistan to act o the latest act of terrorism linked to the former part of India:

Pakistan must act to help catch the perpetrators of last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai that bore the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda-style operation, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

“I have said that Pakistan needs to act with resolve and urgency, cooperate fully and transparently,” Rice told reporters in New Delhi today. “That message has been delivered and will be delivered to Pakistan.”

Will this latest report serve as a real wake up call? Or will it be treated like previous wake up calls, including the wake up calls several administrations of both parties got about Al Qaeda - a wake up call where the wakee reaches up, hits the alarm clock and goes back to sleep?

There are signs — notably Obama’s focus on the issue — that it’ll be taken seriously this time, although some are already claiming the alarm too strident.

Newsweek has this must-read interview:
There has been no national security issue that has preoccupied the presidency of George W. Bush more than the threat of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists.

But Wednesday, a congressionally-mandated bipartisan commission is slated to deliver a sobering report to the White House concluding that the threat is as great as ever—and that it is now better than 50-50 that a WMD terrorist attack will take place someplace in the world in the next five years. In an interview with NEWSWEEK, commission co-chair Bob Graham—former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a senior advisor on intelligence issues to Barack Obama’s transition team—discusses the panel’s work.

NEWSWEEK: Is there something you learned in the course of working on this that surprised you?
Bob Graham: Yes. What surprised me was the degree of risk associated with a biological weapon. When you think weapons of mass destruction, you tend to think mushroom cloud. But the ubiquitous nature of pathogens and the increasing lethality of both natural and synthetic pathogens led our commission to conclude it’s more likely that an attack will come biologically rather than nuclear.

Rep. Jane Harman issued a press release today suggesting the commission is playing the “fear card” here, that this is the kind of talk we’ve heard from the Bush administration in recent years — and maybe a little too much of that distorts the debate?
This issue has been stated by every presidential candidate at least going to back to the year 2000 as being the No. 1 security concern for the United States—including [President-elect] Barack Obama. The problem is, while we have done some things that have reduced the threat, we haven’t done enough. Our adversaries are gaining greater capabilities and our margin of safety has been retreating. There has been a series of policy issues in which proliferation was posited against either an economic or a geopolitical objective. And in the large majority of those cases, proliferation has lost. The most recent example of that is the Indian nuclear agreement, [allowing for the sale of U.S. nuclear technology to India] which has a very destabilizing effect on nonproliferation treaty commitments. China has cited the India agreement when it sold reactors to Pakistan. Russia has cited it in defense of its relations with Iran. So our action has contributed to our greater vulnerability.
Read it in its entirety…