Trent Franks: Obama's Self-Praise on Nuclear Terrorism Completely Unwarranted

April 7, 2010 - Following comments in which President Obama claimed his Administration's policies marked "the first time preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism is now at the top of America's nuclear agenda," Congressman Trent Franks (AZ-02) responded with the following statement:

"Given many left-wing media outlets' unwarranted, effusive praise for the President's recent nuclear arms reduction agreement with
Russia -- an agreement that, incidentally, does drastically less than
similar initiatives carried out by the Republican Administration that preceded his own -- President Obama is perhaps buying into his own spin. "However, I would remind President Obama that one need not look back very far in history to see examples of Presidential initiatives that not only actually addressed the threat of nuclear terrorism, but did so on a scale not even remotely matched by any of his present, misguided, and dangerous policies. "It was the Republican Bush Administration, not the Obama Administration, that implemented
the Proliferation Security Initiative that now enjoys the support of half of the nations on the face of the globe. And it was the same Republican Administration, not the Obama Administration, that aggressively pursued the highly-successful Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction, a far-reaching program that has led to
the deactivation of over 6,000 nuclear warheads obtained from former Soviet states, in addition to thousands of nuclear missiles, missile launchers, bombers, and submarines, to name a few examples -- technology that could have otherwise easily found its way into terrorists' hands, had it remained unsecured. "Finally, this Administration's astonishing refusal to deal firmly and decisively with Iran's continued defiant pursuit of a nuclear weapons program vaporizes the President's boasts about his intent or accomplishments in preventing nuclear terrorism. The radical Iranian regime is the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, having provided weapons to numerous terrorist organizations, and there is no reason to believe Ahmadinejad's maniacal regime would hesitate to provide nuclear weapons to these same groups. "Even as the President patted himself on the back, Iran's nuclear program advanced unabated by his Administration, while the window to prevent known terrorist-suppliers from obtaining devastating weapons continues to close rapidly. President Obama clearly seems far more interested in delivering speeches about preventing nuclear terrorism than he is in actually taking the difficult but necessary steps to do it."

Congressman Franks is serving his fourth term in the U.S. House of Representatives, and is a member of the Committee on Armed Services, Strategic Forces Subcommittee, Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee, Military Readiness Subcommittee, Committee on the Judiciary, Constitution Subcommittee, and is Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law.