Byline: The Register-Guard

The next Congress and administration must waste no time in addressing some perilously neglected needs of homeland security.

A new independent study by the bipartisan Partnership for a Secure America says the United States remains "dangerously vulnerable"

The threat of attack remains disturbingly real despite repeated assurances by the Bush administration that it has made broad progress on homeland security, according to the partnership, which includes leaders of the disbanded 9/11 Commission. The commission investigated government missteps before the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.

The report, which will be released formally today, says thousands of U.S. chemical plants remain unprotected, that efforts to reduce access to nuclear technology and bomb-making materials have slowed, and that the Bush administration continues to resist strengthening an international treaty aimed at preventing bioterrorism.

If the report's findings sound familiar, it's because they echo what the 9/11 Commission told Congress in 2004 when it warned that al-Qaeda terrorists still sought to commit attacks on the United States, and that they and other terrorists would try to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

In 2005, the follow-up 9/11 Public Discourse Project found that the federal government had made "insufficient progress" in safeguarding the country against weapons of mass destruction. In 2006, the Partnership for a Secure America repeated the same assessment in a statement signed by nearly two dozen former senior officials from both parties. So it has gone every year, every 9/11 anniversary.

The report offers several basic recommendations, including the creation of a top-level position with authority to make governmentwide decisions on anti-terrorism funding and programs. Others include the need for a strategic plan that links existing anti-terrorism programs and ensures adequate funding, and for an aggressive strengthening of international cooperation.

These should long ago have been anti-terrorism no-brainers for Congress and the Bush administration. Complaints about budgetary impacts and the limitations of multilateralism pale when compared with the havoc that would be created if terrorists mounted another major attack on U.S. soil.

The next Congress and administration must be uncompromising on these and other challenges of homeland and national security.

When the Partnership for a Secure America's next report comes out in 2009, it should be filled with praise for the government's efforts in preventing terrorist attacks, not with the criticisms that have become all too familiar in recent years.