Article

2004-08-11 Home Front: WoT

Al Qaeda Trying to Explode Nuclear Bomb in USA

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Posted by Mike Sylwester 2004-08-11 8:19:22 AM|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 As it stands, this article is pure political attack on the current administration.

1) Perry gives no backup for his assertion that we are not doing the necessary things to prevent such an attack. In fact, many steps have been taken to deploy sensors that can scan incoming cargo containers, for instance. Is it enough to be certain we don't get hit? Probably not -- for one thing, these sensors were designed and tested quickly and are being built as fast as possible, but it takes time to do so. More to the point, I doubt we can afford what it would take to be certain ... that would amount to shutting down trade, for one thing. So what is at stake is a question of priorities and risk / return tradeoffs - a subject open to different opinions among reasonable and informed people, but not what this article does.

b) As has been said more than once here, it's not at all clear that a Soviet-era suitcase nuke is likely to be in operable condition. Theoretically, if it was tended by a knowledgeable techician with suitable tools and materials, it might be possible. And certainly there are ex-Soviet engineers and technicians willing to sell their services in light of little employment at home. but for this to work the suitcase nukes would have needed to be under this sort of maintenance since their first manufacture and on a regular basis while they are in storage / hiding . Again, possible, but not nearly as cut and dry a threat as the article suggests.

What is so damned frustrating about these issues is that a) there is no single right answer - it's a matter of which risk you think is less likely to bite us and what resources you can deploy - and b) not one of us in the public sphere (and that includes Perry) really knows what the intel currently shows or what has been put in place so far for detection / protection.

Does that mean I am confident we won't be hit? Not at all. Does it mean I think the current administration has called each shot right? Hindsight being 20-20, no doubt we'll find out they didn't.

But it does mean that an article like this is deliberate partisan manipulation of public fears masquerading as a news piece.

Take with large grains of sodium chloride, folks.

Posted by rkb 2004-08-11 08:50|| 2004-08-11 08:50|| Front Page Top

#2 Al-Qaida DOES NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I am 100% certain of this for one reason: if they got one they would use it as soon as possible. They would not hesitate to use it. Furthermore they would have to kill to get one, or build one themselves, which they takes a level of sophistication & an amount of resources that they don't possess. I don't believe there are people on this planet that would sell Al-Qaida a nuclear weapon because they would know that they were going to use it for sure and that whoever was on the recieving end of it would hunt anyone involved down and kill them. 50 million dollars is useless if you're not alive to spend it. Besides, I think even the vast majority of the most unsavory characters (thieves, liars, killers, criminals, etc.) have moral misgivings about the detonation of a nuclear device in a modern city. No one would want that on their conscious and it would bring down heat on them like never before seen. It would take a confluence of special circumstances & events (a "perfect storm") such as an extremely large amount of money & a particularly selfish, immoral, remorseless & stupid/suicidal seller/provider of the weapon. So the only realistic way that they would come upon such a weapon would be to take it by force. They would have to amass quite a large strike force and spirit it out of the country quickly. But the response would be unprecedented. If America heard that a nuclear weapon was taken by Islamic militants by force in a given country, we would frickin' invade the country and search house to house until we found it...And least I hope so. I would expect nothing less than the deployement of all 1 million plus soldiers in our arsenal to comb the frickin place. That's what we oughtta do in Afghanistan/Pakistan to find OBL. Just amass 350,000 men and walk arm to arm from Mazar-i-Sharif south to India until we find his ass!

Posted by Kentucky Beef">Kentucky Beef 2004-08-11 09:14|| 2004-08-11 09:14|| Front Page Top

#3 Well said, rkb! The question we need to start asking is WHY is the media so willing to act in such a Soviet/Nazi propaganda-like manner?

Is it just to get Kerry elected? But then you have to ask WHY they want KERRY to be elected. Obviously, the Soviets and the Naziâs picked the candidates that were loyal to their cause (ie: puppets) and sold them to the people. So it seems less a question of whether they are loyal to Kerry than Kerry is loyal to them.

How is it that the only mainstream media news that hits the airwaves is destructive to our society and security. We need to start asking the question of WHO is funding the propaganda that we are daily bombarded with. Iâm beginning to question whether it is the leftist ideologues who drive this destructive agenda or whether those with a destructive agenda are elevating the discourse of the ideologues

Posted by B 2004-08-11 09:33|| 2004-08-11 09:33|| Front Page Top

#4 Oopsâ¦by âtheyâ, I mean âthe mediaâ
â¦not the Naziâs or the soviets

Posted by B 2004-08-11 09:39|| 2004-08-11 09:39|| Front Page Top

#5 B,

We didn't think you'd insult Nazis or Commies by comparing them to "the media."

Posted by dreadnought 2004-08-11 10:07|| 2004-08-11 10:07|| Front Page Top

#6 Graham Allison is one of those bait-and-switch liberals who sound hawkish while advocating appeasement as the answer to every problem. When action is proposed in one area, they will switch the subject to another area which they claim as more dangerous, but is essentially not susceptible to resolution using anything we have in our arsenal. This is how liberals stall for time in order to help our enemies get stronger.

If al Qaeda had a nuke in-country, they would have detonated it by now. The risk of discovery is too high - these guys are on foreign territory - and every move of theirs is conspicuous. If they're sheltered by local Muslims, there are very few who would agree to having all their friends and family killed. Even though support for the jihad is high among Muslims, most Muslims think other Muslims should fight the Great Satan, given the self-evident justice, in their eyes, of the cause. The whole Kristof article is a hatchet job that sounds hawkish, while advocating action against the strongest of our enemies. The reality is this - when the Russian armies wanted to undermine the Axis war machine on the Eastern Front, it went after the Italians, the Romanians and the Hungarians first, not the German army itself. Thus, going after Iraq first was the right choice, regardless of Graham Allison's delusions of himself as some kind of strategist, rather than a glorified historian. Allison can write, but he's a better writer than he is either a historion or a strategist.

Posted by Zhang Fei">Zhang Fei 2004-08-11 10:38|| http://www.polipundit.com]">[http://www.polipundit.com] 2004-08-11 10:38|| Front Page Top

#7 It is hard to build, buy or transport a nuke while looking for RPVs over your shoulder. You never quite know when or when a Hellfire will turn you and your crew into a burning red mist.

Al Qaeda has been rocked back on their heels and they are unlikely to put togeether anything more terrifuing than one of their weddings. They are shitting in the their own backyard while using the net the scare leftists into these ridiculous missives.

Posted by badanov">badanov 2004-08-11 11:29|| http://www.rkka.org]">[http://www.rkka.org] 2004-08-11 11:29|| Front Page Top

#8 Speaking of container ships, I'm more concerned about perfectly non-nuclear fertilizer containers being lit off, a la Texas City in 1947, but in a coordinated way.

Posted by eLarson 2004-08-11 13:40|| 2004-08-11 13:40|| Front Page Top

#9 Any one else here think Graham Allison just read the dust cover on Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears"?

Follow me here:
1. Dragonfire <-> (SoAF)Spinnaker
2. 10k yield <-> (SoAF)15k yield
3. missing Russian nuke <-> (SoAF)setup to look like missing Russian nuke
4. Arab/Islamic terrrorist <-> ok, that one's definitely in the public domain but you get my point.

Posted by Psycho Hillbilly Network Design Engineer 2004-08-11 14:35|| 2004-08-11 14:35|| Front Page Top

#10 "But then you have to ask WHY they want KERRY to be elected."

The underlings of the media (reporters, editors, support staff) believe in the liberal "cause" so they're backing Kerry, and besides, the publishers have ordered them to. Secondly, the publishers know that Kerry will fuck things up when he's elected, and that means there will be more sensational news coverage, which sells papers and air time. To them, Kerry = $$$.

Most media outlets are kind of like most insurance companies--it'd be so great if they did the right thing, but they exist to make a profit, and that's their bottom line. They are businesses first, and foremost, and do what they think will make them money. Everything else is dispensable. The whole "watchdog" on government media ideal is easily sacrificed by publishers who feel it won't increase their profits.

Posted by ex-lib 2004-08-11 14:59|| 2004-08-11 14:59|| Front Page Top

#11 ex-lib: The underlings of the media (reporters, editors, support staff) believe in the liberal "cause" so they're backing Kerry, and besides, the publishers have ordered them to.

I think you can stop right here. Most reporters are liberals. Most people in the publishing business are liberals. I don't think there's any business angle at all - in fact, they are acting against their own business interests. Look at how Fox News is siphoning away audience share from CNN and MSNBC. It's pretty clear that balanced coverage works - but they don't care - it's not about the money - it's about the ideology. And the bias is actually unconscious - a product of the liberal cocoon they live in. As Bernard Goldberg (in his expose of liberalism at CBS) put it - they don't even see their views as liberal - they think that these are moderate views that any right-thinking person should hold.

Posted by Zhang Fei">Zhang Fei 2004-08-11 15:14|| 2004-08-11 15:14|| Front Page Top

#12 As mentioned in the first reply by rkb:
IF AL QAEDA HAD A NUCLEAR DEVICE, THEY'D ALREADY HAVE USED IT.
The terrorists are not saving one for a "rainy day." Atom bombs are maintenance intensive pieces of equipment that al Qaeda has neither the expertise, facilities nor equipment to fabricate, service or refurbish. Once in possession of one, they would immediately deploy it before its "best by" date expired.

Equally so, as Kentucky Beef elaborated upon, America will not just take out whatever country harbors those who commit this atrocity, we will then go after the purveyors of said device and reduce them to smoking glass as well. All fissile material has an isotopic fingerprint that can be traced back to an individual breeder reactor. If we are not able to identify the specific fingerprint, it will merely mean that the material came from a very few countries that have not submitted analytic samples. That would be North Korea, Pakistan and, maybe, Israel.

After being attacked with a device whose ancestry we cannot trace, it would be a safe bet that Pakistan and North Korea would be glow-in-the-dark playgrounds for hot neutrons. Any other country we could trace a terrorist device to would probably meet the same fate.

While this in no way assures that terrorists are deterred from attempting a nuclear attack, it certainly discourages most rational people from providing them with one. This is why halting Iran's weapons development drive is so critical. They will neither provide fingerprint samples nor have any compunctions about handing off bombs to the highest bidder. The insane Iranian mullahs are the single greatest threat in modern history and must be stopped.

Posted by Anonymous6050 2004-08-11 15:20|| 2004-08-11 15:20|| Front Page Top

#13 A6050=Zenster

Posted by Zenster 2004-08-11 15:28|| 2004-08-11 15:28|| Front Page Top

#14 Zenster: If we are not able to identify the specific fingerprint, it will merely mean that the material came from a very few countries that have not submitted analytic samples. That would be North Korea, Pakistan and, maybe, Israel.

No way Israel can hide anything from us. I expect Israel is crawling with American agents, given that so many Americans have emigrated there.

Posted by Zhang Fei">Zhang Fei 2004-08-11 16:03|| 2004-08-11 16:03|| Front Page Top

#15 Zhang Fei, I mentioned Israel only out of a wish to remain accurate. It's North Korea and Pakistan (in that order) that pose the greatest threats as of now. If Iran ever comes online, they will (literally) rocket to the top of our Christmas list.

Posted by Zenster 2004-08-11 16:17|| 2004-08-11 16:17|| Front Page Top

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