Since 9/11, Americans have held tightly to a very suspect assumption that if we do our best, we can protect ourselves from attack. An aggressive stance, the best armed militaries and investment in defensive measures will save us from a potential nuclear or biological attack. This flies in the face of an old maxim that in the ages old struggle between armor and projectile, defender and aggressor, the winner is always he who initiates. (A paraphrase, I'd have to hunt for the source.)
Anyway, Wired has an article about our efforts to scure our ports against nuclear attack.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.11/nukes.html
I think any intelligent high school kid would realize that if Bin Laden can find more than a dozen guys willing to fly planes into buildings, he can dupe someone into remotely detonating a bomb as enters port, BEFORE sensors can pick it up. Imagine an Al Qaeda operative just calling a cell phone number as a freighter bearing a bomb sails past the Statue of Liberty into NYC... It's simply not feasible to protect ourselves and it's a waste of money. Think what china could have accomplishe dinstead of the Great Wall. Think of the waste that was Hadran's Wall, The Walls of Troy or the Maginot Line. Static defenses are too easy to defeat. All it takes is patience and intelligence. In the mean time, we can expect corporate profiteering and fear mongering and maybe a nuclear arms race with China thanks to our missile defense shield.
Yay W. He's strong on defence (spending).