E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Simulation Gives Glimpse of Nuke Terror
Tue, May 04, 2004

By PAUL AMES, Associated Press

BRUSSELS, Belgium - European officials conducted a simulation showing how al-Qaida could kill 40,000 people and plunge the continent into chaos if a crude nuclear device were detonated outside NATO headquarters in Brussels

"We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe," said former Sen. Sam Nunn, who helped organize the exercise, dubbed Black Dawn. "To win this race, we have to achieve cooperation on a scale we’ve never seen or attempted before."

Nunn spoke to reporters Tuesday, a day after the closed-door war games attended by top officials including the European Union (news - web sites)’s security chief, Javier Solana, and his new counterterrorism czar, Gijs de Vries.

In first part of the scenario, European officials were asked how they would respond to intelligence that al-Qaida had obtained enough highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb.

In the second, they were confronted with computer projections and video displays illustrating the impact of terrorists exploding the device at NATO’s headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels, immediately killing 40,000 people, overwhelming hospitals with hundreds of thousands of injured, spreading panic through Europe and plunging the world economy into turmoil.

"Once you are in this phase, there are no good options," said Michele Flournoy, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who helped prepare the exercise.

More than 50 people from 15 countries and a dozen international organizations attended the exercise, mostly EU ambassadors but also civilian and military officials from NATO, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Interpol and other bodies.

Nunn appealed for the Europeans to step up funding for increased protection at sites where weapons-grade uranium and plutonium are stored — particularly in former Soviet states. He said preventing al-Qaida from getting its hands on such material was the best chance of stopping it from building a bomb.

"It’s well within al-Qaida’s operational capabilities to recruit the technical expertise needed to build a crude nuclear devise," he said. "The hard part is getting the nuclear material, but we do not make it nearly hard enough."

Nunn, a Democrat from Georgia and former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, helped push through a $10 billion program in 1991 to destroy and safeguard weapons of mass destruction in Russia and other former Soviet republics. But he said at least 60 percent of sites still must be secured.

He said European leaders should make good on pledges made two years ago as part of a $20 billion commitment by the Group of Eight to provide more funding for that program over 10 years. They should also push President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) to do more when the G-8 group of world leaders meets next month in Georgia, he said.

Solana and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer convened the exercise to show the extent of the danger. "The threat of catastrophic terrorism is not confined to the United States or Russia or the Middle East," Solana said. "The new terrorist movements seem willing to use unlimited violence and cause massive casualties."

Nunn urged increased protection for weapons-grade uranium kept at research sites, which are often poorly guarded university facilities; accelerated destruction of tactical nuclear weapons by both the United States and Russia; enhanced international intelligence sharing; and more help to find new jobs for poorly paid Russian nuclear scientists.

EMPHASIS ADDED
Still no mention of any credible deterrent. Unless a united Western world comes up with some method of permanently forestalling a terrorist nuclear attack, one will happen.

When enough tens of thousands of people have died and enough trillions of dollars have been bled out of our world by way of flat economies and regime change by force, maybe then the world’s governments will realize that there does exist a credible deterrent to terrorism.

Islamic terrorists purposefully eschew both a central location and any national affiliation in order to frustrate traditional military prosecution. By flouting all known behavioral conventions regarding the sanctity of human life, terrorists make mandatory some form of wholesale retaliation against their stated intention of world domination. There exists a credible deterrent to such depravity and civilization must find the moral fortitude to employ it.

Islamic terror seeks to hold the entire world hostage through random violence. All free people are obliged to combat such political blackmail with overwhelming force. Nothing less is adequate to the task and time is running out before Islamic terrorists finally make a palpable demonstration of their intent to slaughter millions of people at a time in pursuit of their goals.

The Strategy of Islamic Terror

The hostage mentality and decentralized nature of Islamic terror demands a matching response. There is only one way to achieve parity against such a nebulous yet virulent menace. Free society must find a single and effective lever against such an intentionally randomized pattern of attack. If Muslim radicals seek to hold hostage our liberty, all free people must conclusively trump this attempt at intimidation by imperiling the only thing that Islamists hold dear. There is only one class of items that fall into this category.

A central feature and critical component of Islamic terror’s pseudo-moral campaign is religion. They shamelessly use faith as a smokescreen for duplicity and profer it in philosophic argument against free thinking secular opponents. Islamic theocracy knows how it epitomizes a most horrific melding of church and state to the defenders of liberty. By cloaking their political coercion with clerical garb, Islamists seek to neuter any opposition with protests of religious suppression. It is this fundamental artifice that must be exposed and turned against them. All attempts to thwart Islamic terrorism will hinge upon this cardinal tenet of their doctrine.

The absolutist and nonnegotiable nature of Islamist terror must be a central feature of any functional counterattacks against it. An equal degree of resolve is required of those who will successfully defeat against this assault on civilization. Reciprocal levels of unabashed and brute force methodology must be administered as an antidote to such hidebound mentality. As adherents of a just and humane society we are not permitted to mirror the violence and savagery of our terrorist opponents. To match their atrocities with similar barbarity is not an option. A credible deterrent to Islamic terror must manifest as a credible threat yet still be stripped of any cruelty or brutality.

Fundamentalist Islam’s insistence upon global theocracy must be recognized as the program of worldwide cultural genocide it really is. Any disregard shown for this overarching aspect of their aims is a fatal error. Once this crucial feature of their agenda is openly admitted, a path towards radical Islam’s suppression finally begins to appear. It is only after recognizing the full scope of Islamic terror’s destructive capacity that the need to permanently quash it becomes apparent. Those who are unconvinced of their threat’s broader implications too often serve terrorism’s ends by maintaining a dismissive or even protective attitude towards the Islamists’ ostensibly religious objectives.

It is a dire mistake to think that radical Islam is driven by purely religious motivations. This is how they continue to mask their actual methods and goals. Secular society rightly enshrines religious freedom as a fundamental human right. Islamist’s pervert any sanctity of this liberty by acting under the cover of their religion’s role as an established institution. Terrorism’s success is contingent upon the free world’s repugnance at condemning long standing religions like Islam. Yet these radicals instantly repudiate this sacred right by openly professing their aim of violent domination. The intrinsic duplicity shown by such malicious hypocrisy constitutes a central tenet of validly refuting any claim to freedom of religious practice the Islamists make.

The principal function that freedom of religion serves is to sustain peaceful human coexistence. Insisting upon such liberty whilst simultaneously marching under false colors in pursuit of theocratic domination is the height of moral bankruptcy. There is no possible religious justification for such an ultimately dishonest creed. Any attempt to do so must instantly be recognized as a naked lust for political power and nothing else. Our world has no place for such malevolent conniving. Healthy society cannot sustain such malignant treachery without succumbing to cancerous putrefaction.

Like any religion, Islam is incapable of providing incontrovertible proof of its supremacy over all other faiths. For its radical factions to seek such ascendancy solely on the basis of their own unilateral religious intolerance is patently ridiculous. It is not any fault of this world’s remaining population if the majority of Muslims remain unable to expel such apostates from within their midst. There is no justifiable reason why the globe should be punished for Islam’s inability to purge itself of genocidal thugs. Should they prove unwilling or incapable of doing so, Western culture is obliged to promote their own solutions, however unpalatable they might be to Islam.

"All we are breaking are stones," is how Mullah Omar described the Taleban’s destruction of ancient Buddhist cliff carvings and priceless museum statuary in Afghanistan. From now on all Islamic monuments can only be regarded as ordinary masonry in return. Fundamentalist Islam’s obdurate refusal to respect any other culture’s monuments should be turned against them in full force. Their unwillingness to recognize the value of secular society’s own structures must be punished. Radical Islam has to be repaid in kind for such blatant disrespect of any other culture’s achievements. To advance their cause through the annihilation of all other societies is a direct admission of jihadist Islam’s moral bankruptcy.

A Roadmap For Deterrence

Chemical or Biological Attack:

First Biological Attack: Upon any major city being dusted with Anthrax, Medina is immediately dusted in a similar fashion after an evacuation warning. In order to fully impress the unacceptable nature of such an attack, Medina is also dusted again (after warning) immediately prior to the Haj.

Second Biological Attack: Medina is dusted for one entire calendar year extending through any subsequent Haj.

Third Biological Attack: Mecca is dusted at once and then immediately prior to any subsequent Haj.

Fourth Biological Attack: Mecca is dusted for one entire calendar year extending through any subsequent Haj.

Fifth Biological Attack: Mecca and Medina are continuously contaminated on a permanent basis until 15 calendar months elapse without any further biological attacks.

Radiological Attack: (dirty bomb)

First Radiological Attack: Medina is poisoned with a similar isotope. The Islamic world may now pick up the tab for decontaminating their precious shrine just as whatever victim metropolis shall have to do. Several billion dollars of clean-up expense should make clear the intense lack of wisdom involved with any such strategy.

Second Radiological Attack: Mecca is contaminated in similar fashion.

Third Radiological Attack: Mecca and Medina are dusted in similar fashion. All decontamination attempts are interdicted until 15 calendar months elapse without further radiological attack.

NOTE: Should terrorists merely scale back all attacks to Madrid style atrocities, it may well be necessary to strafe the subsequent Haj gathering at one of Islam’s shrines. No "under-radar" terror acts must be permitted. This is alarmingly close to "barbarity-in-kind" and may require better analysis. It is only suggested here as a response to purposefully scaled back attacks that will not trigger massive retaliation.

Nuclear Terror Attack:

First Nuclear Terror Attack: Retaliation in kind (depending upon warning or not) against Medina.

Second Nuclear Terror Attack: Retaliation in kind against Mecca.

NOTE: If the bomb isotopes can be traced to a given nuclear facility, that source country is also candidate for retaliation in kind. Donor countries must face dire consequences for any complicity in distributing nuclear weapons or fissile material to terrorists.

An Alternative Solution:

The only other viable solution top this is complete preemptive military takeover of Saudi Arabia by a Western Coalition. All access to Islamic shrines by those of Muslim faith is contingent upon a total lack of terror attacks world-wide.

While occupation would still represent a defilement, it does not carry with it the permanent desecration of these Holy sites. The entire Saudi peninsula would be declared a weapons-free zone except for coalition troops. A sentence of summary execution should be put in place for possession of any firearms or significant weaponry.

As usual, any alternative solutions are welcome. Military takeover is the only alternative imaginable to retaliation in kind for NBC attack. This must be made clear to all Islam post haste. Only a lever that applies force to all Muslims will achieve credible threat against those within their ranks who pursue violent jihad. When Islam shows itself capable of self-regulation, this policy can be altered accordingly. Until then, every major terror attack must have a penalty.
Posted by: Zenster 2004-05-04
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=32210