Posted on 09/16/2001 5:07:38 PM PDT by vrwc54
In the interpretation of state speeches there is a rule of the significance of the penultimate. The opening and closing passages of a speech are the place for broad assertions; the middle is the place for the narrative, for the main argument. Just before the end is the place to slip in a disturbing concept, a warning that one does not wish to be overemphasised.There was exactly such a penultimate passage in the Prime Minister’s speech last Friday to the House of Commons. “We know that these groups are fanatics, capable of killing without discrimination. Limits on the numbers they kill and their methods of killing are not governed by morality. The limits are only practical or technical. We know that they would, if they could, go further and use chemical or biological or even nuclear weapons of mass destruction. We know also that there are groups or people, occasionally states, who trade the technology and capability for such weapons. It is time this trade was opposed, disrupted and stamped out. We have been warned by the events of September 11. We should act on the warning.”
Dr Henry Kissinger, who was the most powerful US Secretary of State of the past 40 years, is still used as a well-briefed expositor of US foreign policy in times of crisis. In his current article for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, there is a similar near penultimate paragraph. “Even the smallest nuclear weapon would produce devastation far dwarfing the catastrophe of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.” If Tony Blair and Henry Kissinger both emphasise the threat of nuclear terrorism, they probably have good reason.
Many recent intelligence studies of the threats to American security have referred to the possible possession of nuclear weapons by terrorist groups, and particularly Osama bin Laden’s network. An anonymous paper, prepared earlier in the year, which is circulating in the City of London, alleges that “bin Laden’s possession of weapons of mass destruction is generally considered (in intelligence circles) to be a given . . . bin Laden’s original plan was to build his own tactical nuke. His emissaries have conducted several missions to Europe in an attempt to bring back enriched uranium . . . Reports emerging from Israel and Russia suggest that bin Laden gave his contacts in the Chechen Mafia several million dollars in cash, and heroin with a street value of more than $500 million — in exchange, the Chechens launched an all-out campaign to obtain (ex-Soviet) nuclear suitcase bombs for al-Qaeda (bin Laden’s core group).
“One source even suggests that bin Laden obtained several of these nuclear suitcase bombs in the autumn of 1998 and transferred them into storage in the Taleban’s main secure complex near Kandahar. The same source also claims that the weapons have not yet been used because they are still programmed with a Soviet era coding system that requires a signal from Moscow before detonation is possible. Another source confirms this information and even specifies that the number of tactical nuclear weapons acquired by bin Laden is close to 20.”
This is an account of raw intelligence data, which may or may not be reliable. The terrorists themselves have reason to lie about their possession of nuclear weapons. If they do not have them, they can still use the belief that they do as a threat. If they really do have them, they may not want to draw attention to the fact. However, both the Blair and Kissinger statements, and public evidence given to Congress earlier this year by George Tenet, Director of the CIA, show how seriously the intelligence community takes this possibility. Bin Laden may indeed have nuclear weapons, which could still be in Afghanistan, but could already be hidden near their targets.
US response on the day of the attacks supports this view of the threat. If a similar attack had occurred in the late 1940s, when Truman was President, there is no doubt the President’s instinct would have been to return to the White House at once. That was, indeed, what many Americans expected President Bush to do. The fact that he was first flown to a nuclear command bunker in Nebraska may suggest that his security advisers thought that the New York and Washington attacks might be a trap, with a tactical nuclear strike on the White House as the possible follow-up. Any President might have felt he should risk his own life to get back to the White House; no President would have felt he should risk a nuclear explosion in the centre of Washington.
If one reads the situation in these terms, then the war against terrorism which President Bush has announced becomes a different sort of war, with much higher stakes, but perhaps also with a more realistic possibility of victory. Conventional terrorism is extraordinarily hard to eliminate, because there are always countries which have some sympathy for the terrorists, if not for their methods. In Britain we have experience of that. The IRA received essential support not only from openly terrorist countries such as Libya, but from friendly countries such as the Republic of Ireland or the United States itself.
Terrorist organisations can recover quickly from big setbacks. Abraham Lincoln used a metaphor to describe what happens. At a low point, early in the Civil War, the Union armies were being depleted by diversions. Lincoln said: “To fill up the Army is like undertaking to shovel fleas. You take up a shovel full but before you can dump them anywhere they are gone.” Defeating conventional terrorists, on an individual basis, is indeed like shovelling fleas. Breaking up a terrorist organisation, which depends on the support of foreign states, may be more feasible if the other states come to feel that the terrorism has become a mortal threat to them.
We have seen the American reaction to the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. These were very serious attacks, causing casualties greater than those at Pearl Harbor, but they were conventional attacks. Suppose that they were now to be followed with nuclear attacks, even using, as Dr Kissinger envisages, “the smallest nuclear weapons”.
It is already certain that a nuclear attack by any foreign state on the United States would be followed by a nuclear counter-attack. However, it seems almost equally probably that a terrorist nuclear attack, even if it were not directly controlled by a foreign state, would lead to a nuclear response by the US against any state that had in any way supported the terrorist group. So long as the threat is the conventional one, there is a certain flexibility; if there were to be a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States, the response against any nation harbouring the terrorists would be instantaneous and terrible.
The United States is now organising a global coalition to destroy all terrorism, particularly the Islamic terrorist network of Osama bin Laden. The major powers of the world all recognise that terrorism is a threat to them. China, Russia, India, Japan, the Nato countries are all in line, whatever quibbles there may be. So are the Islamic countries which are friendly to the United States. There are, however, a number of Islamic countries which have longstanding quarrels with the United States; most of them have had past connections with terrorist groups.
They now face an appalling risk. Apart from Afghanistan, they have no control over bin Laden. Even the Taleban, though they may conceivably control the bombs, cannot control the terrorist network. Facing this risk, some of the most anti-American countries are already dissociating themselves from the terrorists. Libya is backing off. In Iran, the conservative Ayatollah Emami-Kashani, who has been no friend to the US, told worshippers in Tehran on Friday that “this heartbreaking event is worrisome to all humanity”. Indeed it is.
The aim of American policy is to build a universal coalition against terrorism, so as to isolate the terrorists, depriving them of any state refuge or any state support. If these were only conventional terrorists, that might be hard to achieve and harder to sustain. If, however, the intelligence reports are correct, and bin Laden does have some access to nuclear weapons, then even the most sympathetic Islamic states cannot afford to associate with him in any way. It is one thing to be a suicide bomber; it is another thing to become a suicide country.
December 24, 1998
In an interview with Time Magazine, Bin Laden asserted that acquiring weapons of any type was a Muslim “religious duty.” When asked whether he was seeking to obtain chemical or nuclear weapons, Bin Laden replied, “Acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so.”(12) He responded similarly to the same question in an ABC News interview two days later, stating, “If I seek to acquire such weapons, this is a religious duty. How we use them is up to us.”(13)
The Al-Watan al-Arabi source stated that Bin Laden’s team of scientists was composed of “five nuclear scientists from Turkmenistan,” and that the leader of the team “used to work on the atomic reactor of Iraq before it was destroyed by Israel in the 1980’s.” The same source also stated that the scientists were working to develop a nuclear reactor that could be used “to transform the fissionable material into a more active source, one which can produce a fission reaction from a very small amount of material and be placed in a package smaller than a backpack.”(14) In addition, the source stated that Bin Laden had hired “hundreds of atomic scientists” from the former Soviet Union. Reportedly, Bin Laden paid the scientists $2,000 per month, an amount much greater than their wages in the former Soviet republics.(15)
Talking with Terror’s Banker
An Exclusive Interview with Osama Bin Ladin
ABCNEWS.com
It sounds like Osama wants to nuke.
I hope that no suitcase nucs go off in America. If it does, however, Bagdad, Tripoli, Teheran, Cairo, Damascus, Kabul, to name a few, will cease to exist. I don't want to see the nuclear genie let out of the bottle, but I hope these middle easterners do not have a deathwish like this.
There can be no doubt that Bin Laden wants to. However, he must lack the capability, or some necessary aspect of the capability. Because if he could do it, it would have been done Tuesday (or before). It is infinitely more difficult for him to successfully pull off this type of attack post-Tuesday. He naturally would have preserved the element of surprise, left the sleeping giant sleeping, if he had such a capability, or nearly had such. Any effort to do so now must occur while the giant is awake and looking hard. Far more risky (as the article points out) and far more difficult.
We may have dodged that bullet by not too many years. And now is most certainly the time to rid the earth of those like Bin Laden, who may be close to acquiring this technology/ability.
Sufficient reason to obliterate said stronghold.
NPR had a pretty realistic commentary this afternoon on the threat of terrorists using chemical and biological weapons the next time. But when I was in the army, we always spoke about three of these highly unpleasant threats, not two: chemical, biological, and nuclear. No reason to believe that the third is out of bounds.
Possibly, but I'm not sure I'd count on it. He's been a buyer on the nuke market for several years:
WMD TERRORISM AND USAMA BIN LADEN
"During the third day of the trial, February 7, 2001, Al-Fadl testified that he was directly involved in an attempt to purchase uranium for Usama Bin Laden at the end of 1993 or the beginning of 1994."
"October 6, 1998 The Saudi-owned, London-based Arabic newspaper, Al-Hayat, declared that Bin Laden had obtained nuclear weapons.(8)"
Good link...Thanks
I think your analysis is spot on, Dawg, and so I have reposted it. I won't let the terrorists intimidate me from living my daily life, but I won't be traveling to any juicy targets if I have no need to go there; places like Disneyworld, movie studios, etc.
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