Poohbah made a point on another thread of saying that the suitcase nukes would be useless after 6 years.
He also noted that AQ reportedly obtained them in 1998.
That has been 6 years. Use em or lose em?
They would be likely be useless, unless (as speculated) UBL has acquired people with knowledge on upkeep.
I'm not certain that such weapons would have a shelf life. Take a look at the life of a mole or sleeper cell operative.
A mole is somebody who lives and works as a law abiding citizen and who holds a job in either government or in a militarily sensitive corporation. He gathers intelligence for his employer. He/she does this for either monetary reasons or ideology. Folks who do it for money are often the ones to make an "approach" to the other side. They have prior access and a product worth selling. Those who operate for ideological reasons are foreign nationals who must infiltrate. Usually trained in espionage tradecraft. Knows how to avoid detection and can stay active and undetected for decades. There are several real life examples of this. One was made into the movie: The Falcon and the Snowman.
A sleeper cell is not usually a trained operative when it comes to long term spycraft and intel gathering. They have a specific mission and it is usually a violent "one shot" operation. They act as law abiding upstanding members of the community. They await a "go code" and they act to carry out their mission. Remember the fanciful movie with Charles Bronson called Telefon?" I think that was an exaggeration, but not too much. They may anticipate capture or death. This is the most likely scenario for somebody who may reach, activate and detonate one of the suitcase nukes. They will have the skills and tools to do this, but they may not, for example be knowledgable about firearms or improvised explosives, unless it is a specific part of the mission.
Here is the kicker: The anticipated "GO CODE" is by it's own nature a tenuous thing. Such sleeper cells and moles may have to go decades before activation. That's why they are so difficult to locate and neutralize. After taking all the trouble to train and equip such operatives and then emplace them in a community with full cover identities, they would be given technology that could potentially cripple their adversary and it would have an expiration date?