More than four years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the US government has not taken all the necessary steps to protect the country, the former Sept. 11 commission that investigated the terror attacks said on Monday.

Despite the recommendations made by the commission in its final report last year and measures taken by the government, the United States was still vulnerable to terrorism, the former commissioners said at a news conference.

"We believe that the terrorists will strike again. So does every responsible expert that we have talked to. And if they do, and these reforms that might have prevented such an attack have not been implemented, what will our excuse be?" said the Thomas Kean, chairman of the panel.

He said the terrorists were learning and adapting, and that the US government "is still moving at a crawl."

The privately funded successor group known as the 9/11 Public Discourse Project to the original commission, which was set up by the Congress in 2002 and was disbanded after issuing its recommendations in July 2004, was issuing its "report card" on how successfully the commission's recommendations have been implemented.

Kean, a Republican former governor, said the report card contained "far too many" C's, D's and F's.

The panel gave the government an "F" on homeland security spending for cities most at risk, on improving radio communication for emergency agencies and on airline passenger prescreening, and awarded only one "A" for the administration's efforts to curb terrorist financing.

He said it was scandalous that first responders did not have adequate communications equipment and that airline passengers were not fully screened against terrorist lists.

"We're frustrated, all of us -- frustrated at the lack of urgency in addressing these various problems," he said.

The Bush administration has enacted the Sept. 11 commission's centerpiece proposal to create a national intelligence director and a number of other recommendations, after the panel issued its final report last year, but has stalled on other ideas, including improving communication among emergency responders and shifting federal terrorism-fighting money so it goes to states based on risk level.

White House counselor Dan Bartlett said on Monday the Bush administration had acted on some 70 of the commission's recommendations and that others were awaiting congressional action.

"It's important that Congress act on those recommendations," he said on CBS' "The Early Show."

Source: Xinhua