Britannia Radio

Visit our News page Combating the EMP Threat, Part One by Brigitte Gabriel Dear Harold, Last Thursday and Friday ACT! for America’s Executive Director, Guy Rodgers, emailed you two commentaries on the seriousness of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat to the United States. If you didn’t see these emails, you can access them now by clicking here and reading the two emails entitled “Is this the greatest threat to America?” As a quick review, experts believe, based on both simulated test results and actual historical events, that a few – or even one – nuclear warheads detonated above the atmosphere of the U.S. could knock out 70% or more of our electrical power grid. A government commission, the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack (http://empcommission.org), issued a report one year ago that stated: “…the cascading effects from even one or two relatively small weapons exploded in optimum location in space at present would almost certainly shut down an entire interconnected electrical power system, perhaps affecting as much as 70% or possibly more of the United States, all in an instant…” (p. 19). The loss of 70% of our power grid for even a few months would devastate our country. Everything from food production and distribution to communications and transportation would be crippled. Imagine the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina spread throughout most of the country — and lasting for months, not days or weeks. With all the turmoil in Pakistan due to the growth and increasing aggressiveness of the Taliban, the prospect that some of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of the Taliban – and even al Qaeda – is now frighteningly real. Meanwhile, Iran and North Korea are working together to develop missile launch technology and Iran continues to work towards acquiring nuclear weapons. What this means is that the day is not too far off when our worst enemies will have both nuclear weapons and missile launching capabilities to launch an EMP attack against us. Unlike during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, many of these enemies will not be deterred by the threat of “mutually assured destruction.” This is a nightmare scenario that simply can’t be allowed to happen. So what can be done? America must accelerate and expand our first line of defense, our missile defense program. You might not know it from watching the news, but we have the proven technology to knock down missiles launched at us. What we need to do is add to this defense arsenal and continue to improve its effectiveness, to provide the sufficient deterrence to prevent a nuclear weapon from ever being exploded above our country. This is why the word coming from the Obama administration that funding for missile defense is going to be cut is precisely the wrong action to take. This is why the Obama administration’s signals that it may reverse course on setting up a missile defense perimeter in Europe is precisely the wrong action to take. Therefore, part of our plan of action this year will be to fight such cuts, expand missile protection of the U.S., and to push for the deployment of a missile defense perimeter in Europe. There are different tactics we can pursue to do this, a few of which I will spell out in an email tomorrow. In addition, as the Commission states in its report (p. 55), there are actions American industry and government can take to better protect essential parts of our power grid in order to limit the damage from a successful EMP attack against us. This would be our second line of defense. The third line of defense would be ensuring the availability of readily applied replacement parts in the event that the first two lines of defense are penetrated. By expanding our missile defense and protecting the essential parts of our power grid we can create three lines of defense that will make it extremely difficult for our enemies to wreak the kind of havoc that would occur if 70% or more of our power grid were knocked out for months. So what are the practical steps we as an organization can take right now? First, we are joining forces with a coalition called EMPACT, the international EMP Awareness Coordination Task Force. This task force is a rapidly growing coalition of organizations that understand the EMP threat and are committed to taking action to defend us against it. EMPACT has scheduled a national conference on this issue for September 9th and 10th, to be held in Niagara, NY (just outside of Buffalo). The objective of the conference will be to both educate on the threat AND provide strategies and action items to combat the threat. We are going to be involved in this conference and will give you more details as they are available. Second, if you have ever thought about starting a local ACT! for America chapter, now is the time to do so. We need to make progress THIS YEAR on this EMP threat. Increasing the size and thus potential impact of our chapter network is a must if we are to do this. You may recall the defense poster from years ago that exclaimed “Uncle Sam needs you!” Well, “Uncle Sam” needs you to join our rapidly growing chapter leader network, which now consists of 285 chapters! Simply click here to sign up. Third, we need to continue growing our grassroots membership. Here’s how you can help. Forward the emails from the past week on the EMP threat to people you know, and add your own message urging them to sign up for our emails by logging on to www.actforamerica.org. The more members we have, the more effective our grassroots efforts will be to persuade members of Congress to act to combat the EMP threat. Tomorrow and Friday I will share with you more details on specific action items we will be pushing for this year — and how you can help make these a reality. This year and next year there are different public policy and other issues that we will be working on. Of course, we would like to win on every one of them, but reality dictates we’ll win some and not others. However, this is one of those issues we can’t afford to lose. In the next 18 months America must create the kind of defenses necessary to prevent a successful EMP attack from being launched against us. A large, organized, “bottom-up” grassroots ACT! for America effort is essential to achieving this. Because, while any terrorist attack would be horrific, a successful EMP attack would be apocalyptic. Always devoted, Brigitte Gabriel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ACT for America P.O. Box 12765 Pensacola, FL 32591 www.actforamerica.org