NATIONAL SECURITY
Barack Obama has said:
“We are here to do the work that ensures no other family members have to lose a loved one to a terrorist who turns a plane into a missile, a terrorist who straps a bomb around her waist and climbs aboard a bus, a terrorist who figures out how to set off a dirty bomb in one of our cities. This is why we are here: to make our country safer and make sure the nearly 3,000 who were taken from us (on 9/11) did not die in vain; that their legacy will be a more safe and secure Nation.”
—March 6, 2007 Speech on the U.S. Senate Floor
The Obama website (http://www.barackobama.com/) states:
Obama will:
--Implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations
--Ensure the nation is prepared to prevent and respond to catastrophe
--Enhance our national resilience to any risk—natural, accidental or terrorist—by ensuring the federal government works with States, localities, and the private sector as an authentic partner in prevention, mitigation, and response
--Allocate our homeland security dollars according to risk to help states and localities prepare for disaster and fund First Responder needs
--Provide the nation’s First Responders with the equipment, training, and support they need by:
--rolling back [recent] funding cuts
--increasing federal resources and logistic support to local emergency planning efforts
--Invest in the resources necessary to improve our emergency preparedness and planning by:
--improving coordination between all levels of government
--creating better evacuation plan guidelines
--ensuring prompt federal assistance to emergency zones
--increasing medical surge capacity
--Continue to support legislation to require mandatory planning for evacuating people with special needs
--Continue to support legislation to create a centralized, federal database to allow individuals displaced by an emergency to call one phone number or go to one website and post their location and condition
--Support efforts to provide greater technical assistance to local and state First Responders
--Dramatically increase funding for reliable, interoperable communications systems
--Support a more rapid turnover of broadcast spectrum to First Responders
--Increase the security of our transit systems, rail lines, and ports by:
--increasing numbers of federal airport screeners
--improving funding for aviation security
--developing a comprehensive terrorist watch list
--mandating screening of all inbound cargo to the U.S.
--improving scanning of cargo at foreign ports
--promoting greater sharing of shipping data across nations
--continuing to advocate for stronger rail and transit security programs
--Secure our chemical and nuclear plants and other critical infrastructure by:
--continuing to support comprehensive plant security legislation that would establish a clear set of federal regulations that all plants must follow
--continuing to support the establishment of guidelines for tracking, controlling, and accounting for spent fuel at nuclear power plants.
--continuing to support legislation to require nuclear plants to inform state and local officials if there is an unintentional leak of a radioactive substance
--Protect local water supplies by:
--continuing to support legislation to provide $37.5 million over 5 years for drinking water systems to upgrade their monitoring and security efforts
--supporting the development of tools for drinking water systems to detect and respond to biological, chemical, and radiological contaminants
--Develop a meaningful critical infrastructure protection plan
--Work with the private sector to ensure that all real targets are prepared for disasters
--Improve Border Security by:
--continuing to support increased funding for border protection efforts
--increasing federal attention to those who enter our borders by water and air
--supporting comprehensive immigration reform
--Improve intelligence capacity by establishing a new senior position responsible for:
--coordinating domestic intelligence gathering
--establishing a grant program to support thousands more state and local intelligence analysts
--increasing our capacity to share intelligence across all levels of government
--Revise the PATRIOT Act to ensure real and robust oversight
--Strengthen the warrantless wiretap approval process by updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to provide greater oversight and prevent related threats to the rule of law.
--Restore Habeas Corpus to ensure sufficient due process to ensure the United States is not wrongfully denying those who pose no danger to this country their liberty.
—Issue: Homeland Security
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) Platform (http://www.democrats.org/a/party/platform.html) states:
The DNC supports:
--Ending the war in Iraq
--Defeating Al Qaeda and combating terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan
--Bolstering our State Department’s Provincial Reconstruction Teams and other agencies helping the Afghan people
--Helping Afghans provide their people with education, basic human services, and a strong economy
--Working with the government of Pakistan to help it develop its own counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency capacity.
--Significantly increasing non-military aid to the Pakistani people and sustain it for a decade.
--Forging a more effective global response to terrorism by creating a properly resourced Shared Security Partnership to enhance counter-terrorism cooperation
--Empowering forces of moderation within Islam
--Strengthening our homeland security by protecting critical infrastructure
--Fully funding and implementing the recommendations of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission
--Establishing a Quadrennial Review at the Department of Homeland Security to assess threats and our ability to confront them
--Developing a National Infrastructure Protection Plan that draws on local knowledge and national priorities
--Supporting First Responders so they are always resourced and prepared
--Pursuing intelligence reform
--Preventing the spread and use of weapons of mass destruction
--Securing nuclear weapons and the material to make them
--Ending the production of fissile material
--Preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons
--De-nuclearizing North Korea
--Strengthening U.S. intelligence collection overseas to identify and interdict would-be bioterrorists before they strike
--Building a trustworthy and accountable cyber-infrastructure to protect America’s competitive advantage
--Revitalizing and support the military
--Expanding the Armed Forces
--Rebuilding the military for 21st-century tasks
--Developing civilian capacity to promote global stability and improve emergency response
--Taking care of our veterans and their families by building a stronger Department of Veterans Affairs
--Implementing the new GI Bill
--Aggressively addressing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury among returning members of the Armed Forces
--Dramatically reducing the backlog of disability claims in the military
--Creating a Military Families Advisory Board to help identify and develop practical policies to ease the burden on military spouses and families
--Protecting our military families from losing their homes to foreclosure
--Ending stop-loss and reserve recall policies that force individuals to remain on active duty well after their enlistments have expired
--Establishing regularity in deployments so military personnel and their families may plan for them
--Providing the National Guard with the resources it needs
--Providing the National Guard with time and support to restore and refit between deployments
--Funding reintegration programs to assist returning service members
--Elevating the Chief of the National Guard to be a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
--Repealing the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy and other policies in order to allow qualified men and women to serve openly regardless of sexual orientation
--Reforming contracting practices and make contractors accountable for any abuses committed by private military contractors
—Pages 28-36
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