Burglars targeted a Tuscumbia business early Thursday morning. What's most alarming is what the thieves took from business. The stolen property is potential dangerous material.
Approximately 1,000 pounds of high-grade nitrate fertilizer was taken from Greens Keepers on Gann Boulevard in Tuscumbia. The company handles fertilization and weed control for residential and commercial lawns. The owner, John Wagner, says he's been in business for twelve years and nothing like this has ever happened. "It's very unusual," says Wagner. "It was a very big shock to walk in at 7:00 a.m. and see all this gone." Sometime early Thursday morning, burglars broke in the business. First, they tried to bust through this glass window in the front of the building. When that didn't work, police say the crooks pried open the side door.
"It appears that 25 to 30 bags of high-grade nitrate fertilizer was taken off the premises," explains Wagner. The thieves stacked the bags of fertilizer onto one of the company trucks, attached a trailer to the back, and loaded a lawn mower on it. The crooks also rummaged through the office - grabbing two computers, an iPod, and a cordless phone. The stolen property is valued at several thousand dollars. For Wagner, that's not the most unsettling part.
"The cost of the fertilizer is not the issue, it's the quantity and the potential for bad guys," explains Wagner. " Wagner worries that having the large amount of fertilizer in the wrong hands could lead to something very dangerous. "It could potentially be made into a bomb," says Wagner.
Excerpted
http://www.whnt.com/news/shoals/whnt-fertilizer-stolen-from-greens-keepers,0,2442663.story
Petraeus: Next Two Weeks Critical to Pakistan's Survival
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, has told U.S. officials the next two weeks are critical to determining whether the Pakistani government will survive, FOX News has learned. "The Pakistanis have run out of excuses" and are "finally getting serious" about combating the threat from Taliban and Al Qaeda extremists operating out of Northwest Pakistan, the general added.
But Petraeus also said wearily that "we've heard it all before" from the Pakistanis and he is looking to see concrete action by the government to destroy the Taliban in the next two weeks before determining the United States' next course of action, which is presently set on propping up the Pakistani government and military with counterinsurgency training and foreign aid.
Excerpted
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/30/petraeus-weeks-critical-pakistans-survival/
“...1,000 pounds of high-grade nitrate fertilizer...”
Thanks for the ping Oorang.
Thanks for the ping. If I remember correctly, this has happened rather frequently. I wonder where it is all going....
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/2009/05/al-qaeda-no-2-now-calls-the-sh.html
. . . U.S. intelligence officials have said Bin Laden is too concerned with his own personal security to oversee Al Qaeda plots, while Zawahiri has increasingly appeared to benefit from protection of current or former Pakistani army or intelligence operatives.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/national-security/story/67379.html
“Clearly we have a rising threat level,” said a U.S. defense official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. “I don’t think it likely that the jihadists will make a mad dash tomorrow (to seize a nuclear site). But in the course of time, I see a rising threat.”
. . . The senior U.S. defense official declined to discuss how the United States would react if militants seized a Pakistani nuclear facility. However, he added: “We have to have a strategy to deal with that. You can be certain that kind of planning is ongoing.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was less sanguine than the president. She said that the insurgency now poses a “mortal threat” to the United States and the world. “If the worst, the unthinkable, were to happen, and this advancing Taliban encouraged and supported by al Qaida and other extremists were to essentially topple the government for failure to beat them back, then they would have the keys to the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan,” she said in an April 26 interview with Fox News.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2009/may/01guest-can-terrorirsts-get-hold-of-pakistani-nukes.htm
. . . I would divide Pakistan’s nuclear capability into three groups and grade the likely threats to them from the Taliban and other jihadi groups as follows::
a. The nuclear arsenal consisting of its stockpile of nuclear weapons: Their physical security is very tight with American inputs into strengthening it and with US monitoring of the state of physical security. Threat low unless and until the Taliban captures power in Islamabad.
b. Sensitive nuclear establishments such as the Kahuta uranium enrichment plant and the Khusab plutonium facility. Their physical security is equally tight, but there are no American inputs and monitoring. Threat low to medium.
c. Other nuclear establishments such as the Chashma nuclear power station constructed with Chinese assistance and the one at Karachi and the various sites in the NWFP and Balochistan where nuclear waste is stored: Their physical security has not received much attention either from the Pakistanis themselves or from the Americans. Moreover, since the Chinese are associated with some of them, they would not like the US to have any role in their physical security. Threat medium to high.
The greatest danger in my view is the Taliban and other jihadi groups attacking one of these less guarded facilities falling in the third group. They have the capability to target them in order to create panic in the Pakistani population and demonstrate their prowess in the non-Pashtun areas of Pakistan.
India and other regional countries should have strong reasons to be worried over this possibility because the environmental and health hazards arising from a terrorist attack on these facilities would affect not only Pakistan, but also its neighbours. A terrorist-caused Chernobyl is a danger of greater possibility than the terrorists capturing the nuclear arsenal.