| Submit your comments on this article |
| Arabia |
| Soddy lunacy revealed by a conspiracy theorist? |
| 2005-05-10 |
| EMBARGOED BOOK CLAIMS SAUDI OIL INFRASTRUCTURE RIGGED FOR CATASTROPHIC SELF-DESTRUCTION According to a new book exclusively obtained by the Huffington Post, Saudi Arabia has crafted a plan to protect itself from a possible invasion or internal attack. It includes the use of a series of explosives, including radioactive âdirty bombs,â that would cripple Saudi Arabian oil production and distribution systems for decades. Bestselling author Gerald Posner lays out this âdoomsday scenarioâ in his forthcoming âSecrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-US Connectionâ (Random House). According to the book, which will be released to the public on May 17, based on National Security Agency electronic intercepts, the Saudi Arabian government has in place a nationwide, self-destruction explosive system composed of conventional explosives and dirty bombs strategically placed at the Kingdomâs key oil ports, pipelines, pumping stations, storage tanks, offshore platforms, and backup facilities. If activated, the bombs would destroy the infrastructure of the worldâs largest oil supplier, and leave the country a contaminated nuclear wasteland ensuring that the Kingdomâs oil would be unusable to anyone. The NSA file is dubbed internally Petro SE, for petroleum scorched earth. To make certain that the damaged facilities cannot be rebuilt, the Saudis have deployed crude Radioactive Dispersal Devices (RDDs) throughout the Kingdom. Built covertly over several years, these dirty bombs are in place at -- among other locations -- all eight of the Kingdomâs refineries, sections of the worldâs largest oil field at Ghawar, and at three of the ten indispensable processing towers at the largest-ever processing complex at Abqaiq. According to the NSA intercepts, Petro SE was devised by the Saudis because of their overriding fear that if an internal revolt or external attack threatened the survival of the House of Saud, the U.S. and other Western powers might abandon them as the Shah of Iran was abandoned in 1979. Only by having in place a system that threatened to create crippling oil price increases, political instability and economic recessions did the royal family believe it could coerce Western military powers to keep them in power. Some American and Israeli officials privately believe that Saudi officials have been aware for more than a decade that their conversations were monitored, and that as a result they greatly exaggerated Petro SE in order to blackmail the West into protecting them at all costs. For the Saudis, the threat to the U.S. and other powers works so long as those countries cannot be certain of the extent of the âself-destruction grid.â Posner chronicles an over twenty-five year multinational intelligence gathering operation that exposes Petro SE -- the House of Saudâs ânuclearâ insurance policy to escape the fate of Saddam Hussein and the Shah of Iran. âAlthough the NSA is not certain of the radioactive elements finally used by the Saudis, they believe Petro SE successfully developed dozens of radiation dispersal devices,â Posner writes. âThese RDDs that the Saudis have integrated into their oil infrastructure are far less lethal than traditional nuclear weapons. The risk is not mass fatal casualties as with a nuclear explosive, but rather increased cancer rates over many years. In the short run, the psychological fear that an area is contaminated by radiation might be so great as to make it commercially unproductive.â Posner is an award-winning author of nine books, including "Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11" and "Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK", and has written for such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and U.S. News & World Report. |
| Posted by:Sobiesky |
| #8 Halliburton's robotic oil worker development program⢠is working on just such a scenario bwahahahahahahaha |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-05-10 21:14 |
| #7 Maybe it's just me, but the idea of Saudi Arabia as a contaminated nuclear wasteland has a certain appeal. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2005-05-10 21:06 |
| #6 Bullshit. Saudi's don't get their hands dirty enough to be able to pull this off without lots and lots of workers/contractors noticing. It would be a huge undertaking to be effective. It would be difficult to prevent accidents/subversion and an intolerable risk. And western powers would take the royals out of power for sure if they did it. Pure bullshit. |
| Posted by: Tom 2005-05-10 20:48 |
| #5 He controls a thing who can destroy that thing |
| Posted by: Maudib 2005-05-10 20:48 |
| #4 Huffington's whoring for links and hits on her new blog. Posner is just the pimp to deliver them. |
| Posted by: too true 2005-05-10 20:05 |
| #3 I call bullshit |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-05-10 20:02 |
| #2 You' think they may be that crazy? If they did come up with the scheme, it would be designed as blackmail, rather than something deployed, I reckon. Otherwise, it would be extremely stupid. One may consider possible infiltration of responsible details by jihadists--it is estimated that about 6% of military and police forces is rather sympathetic to izzies or outright under their command--and manipulating the setup for their own goals. |
| Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-05-10 19:54 |
| #1 This would be laughable if the Saudis weren't crazy and ignorant enough to believe they could contaminate enough of the oilfields to 'cripple' them. Dirty bombs are way over-rated and the most they could do is contaminate a small area and make anyone entering it to take precautions. Oilfields are relatively big places - hundreds of square kilometers. All of the worlds radioactive waste would be needed to contaminate a significant proportion. Infrastructure is of course more vulnerable but I can't see how radioactivity would do more harm than explosives and fire. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-05-10 19:45 |