by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
Pursue terrorists doggedly, Sen. Bill Nelson encouraged his audience, but take care not to trample on the freedoms that inflamed those terrorists in the first place.
The Patriot Act — or the Anti-Terrorism Act, as Nelson called it — “gives prosecutors new tools to go after the terrorists,” he said.
Judges, for example, may now approve telephone tap orders that target people, not necessarily the equipment, “because a terrorist doesn’t use one telephone.”
“If we made a mistake, we put a sunset on this bill of four years,” Nelson said Wednesday. “I have concerns that there is an overzealous attorney general and an overzealous Department of Justice that is implementing this new law. The safeguard is it self-destructs in another two years.
“As we go after the terrorists, we have to be concerned that we don’t diminish the very liberties that we have that set us apart as a society, as a government, as a country, as a people.
“These are some real challenges.”
Nelson was the final speaker in this year’s Issues 2003 Forum series at Florida Coastal School of Law. The series has been organized and presented by The Center for Strategic Governance and International Initiatives.
Nelson “has always been a workaholic on behalf of his constituents,” said Eric Smith, assistant dean for External Affairs, who served in the State House of Representatives with the senator in the 1970s.
The senator “was very gracious” when the law school was getting started seven years ago, added interim Dean Dennis Stone. “At a time when a lot of people were skeptical about the school, he was so helpful to us.”
Geography no longer protects “Fortress America” from its enemies, not since jetliners have been able to cross the oceans with ease.
“We’ve had the great blessings, for two centuries, of having the protection of two big oceans on either side of us,” Nelson said. “Now we see that is not the kind of buffer to protect us.
“You may as well be prepared. We are going to be hit again. There is just too much of an opportunity.”
In his estimation, the most likely threat comes from terrorists with shoulder-mounted heat-seeking missiles that came out of the old Soviet Union or were left behind in Afghanistan.
“I would say the likelihood is that a heat-seeking missile will bring down a commercial airliner,” Nelson said. “Of course, you can imagine the disruption, the fear of people getting on airplanes, and what that will do to our economy.
“I’ve had meetings with Disney and Universal, trying to get them to prepare for what’s going to be just a devastation to Orlando’s economy when that occurs.”
Nelson has been “a sharp critic” of the Bush Administration’s “failure to plan for the occupation” of Iraq.
The military strategy for the invasion, he said, was “brilliant.”
“But,” he added, “we were very poor in not planning and allowing ourselves to have an American face as an occupier in a Moslem country instead of an international face.
“We’re going to have to be successful (in Iraq and Afghanistan,) because, if we pull out, the terrorists will fill the vacuum that’s created.”
Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had been asking since last fall to see the Administration’s plan for occupying Iraq, Nelson said.
“They never showed us the plan because they didn’t have one,” he said. “You see the result.
“They thought they were going to get in there and kick ass and then everybody was going to lay down and say, ‘Thank you ... for coming’ because we got rid of a bad guy. Who, by the way, we haven’t found.
“The problem is that a lot of those Shiites were very grateful we got rid of Hussein but then they didn’t want an American occupier.”
Two of the biggest threats “to peace and the interests of the United States” are North Korea and Iran, “both of which are trying to acquire nuclear weapons,” Nelson said.
“What we’d better do is solve that problem diplomatically,” he said.
The North Koreans may already have one or two nuclear weapons, he added. Iranians would like them, but so far have been unsuccessful.
Iran “has reached out to people like the French, who will sell people anything, including nuclear technology,” Nelson said. “So we’ve got our hands full there, too.”