Washington (CNSNews.com) – The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee says it is time to do something to make the United States safer from the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). 

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) said the U.S. is in no better position today than it was in December 2008, when a government commission warned that Americans were not safe from an attack with biological weapons -- and that a terrorist attack involving a WMD was likely to occur somewhere in the world by 2013. 

At a news conference Tuesday, Lieberman and Rep. Susan Collins (R-Maine) introduced legislation to implement the commission's key recommendations.

“The fact is that we are still not properly prepared to meet this bioterrorist threat, despite measures that have been taken since the 2001 anthrax attacks,” said Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), “and that is what brings us to the legislation that we introduced today, which would implement many of the recommendations of the Graham-Talent Commission.”

The proposed bill, the Weapons of Mass Destruction Prevention and Preparedness Act of 2009, contains measures aimed both at preventing a biological attack and at enhancing the government’s ability to respond to such an attack. 

Among the proposals: an expansion of the U.S. Postal Service’s ability to deliver medical countermeasures; the provision of emergency “Medkits” to emergency responders and their families and increased bio-security measures at laboratories that handle dangerous pathogens. 

Collins, the Republican co-sponsor, described the bill as, “an attempt to counter what we view as an emerging and dangerous threat to our homeland security.” 

The 2008 bioterrorism report, titled World at Risk, was issued by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, which was created by an act of Congress and is commonly referred to as the “Graham-Talent Commission” after its chairman and vice-chairman -- former Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Jim Talent (R-Mo.).

The report, which indicated that a biological attack was more likely than a nuclear attack, reported that an attack could be initiated by terrorists through the use of aerosolized weapons and recommended aggressive government action to reduce the threat of bioterrorism. 

“Without immediate and serious attention, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used someplace on Earth between now and the end of the year 2013,” Graham said at the press conference Monday. 

“Almost a year has passed since that recommendation, that finding was made,” zgraham noted, adding: “The clock is not our friend.”

Speaking in regard to biological terrorism, Talent said the U.S. knows that “terrorists want to do this.”
 
“It fits their strategy of asymmetrical attacks,” he continued. “We know they have the organizational sophistication to do it.”

Talent and Graham were joined at the press conference by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the committee’s ranking Republican. Lieberman and Collins announced that they would be introducing a bill to implement the recommendations made in the report. 

“The bottom line is this,” said Lieberman, “we’ve got to be direct an honest with the American people about the risks facing this country from a terrorist attack using a weapon of mass destruction.”