We won't know for sure until he uses them. I have said all along that I believe Bin Laden has nuclear capablility. To those of you that say if he had them he would have used them already I say YOUR CRAZY. If you have been following ALL of the threads related to Al Qaeda's potential nuclear capability: The Pakistani nuclear scientists, The Chechneyan nuclear suitcases, the testimony from that sheik, the alerts, and everything else I hardly see how you can come to any other conclusion.
He has them and he will use them. They will wait patiently for the opportunity to do the MAXIMUM FINANCIAL DAMAGE to the west and they will use them. Keep a lot of cash handy folks in small bills.
Maximum impact and maximum confusion occurs with surprise - i.e. first strike.
While I'm sure he'd have paid millions for a nuke, I seriously doubt whether he has them. As for your suggestion to start hording small bills,why don't you start marketing such brilliant ideas to the same people who bought into the Y2K non-event.
Like Christmas or New Year's maybe. He might wait for max financial damage, but if he can possibly use it to demoralize us he would try that as well.
More pap for the masses. Meanwhile, Christoper Hitchens spilled the beans on what "they" really fret about -- and how they cope with it.
From http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,612114,00.html:
The night of the weak knees
Christopher Hitchens
Wednesday December 5, 2001
The Guardian
Four weekends ago, I really did receive two Friday-night telephone calls from well-positioned Washingtonians. "Leave now," they told me. "There's a tactical nuke on the loose, and it's headed for DC." One of these callers was in a position to know, and the other was in a position where he was actually paid to know. Calls were being placed to an immediate circle of friends to which, in theory, I was flattered to belong. Those who were calling were also leaving - while not informing the rest of the citizens. Why, then, did I resolve to stay? It wasn't just British pluck, strong as that naturally is. I thought, first, that it was unlikely that al-Qaida, if it had the bomb, would have conducted a petty dress rehearsal with United Airlines. I thought, second, that the detonation of a "use it or lose it" freelance nuke could not be predicted for any given weekend. And I thought, third, that I would feel a colossal cretin if I fled and then came slithering back on Monday morning (especially if the nuclear holocaust was timed for Monday's rush hour after all). In the end, I did take the family on a pre-arranged trip to Gettysburg, leaving late and returning early.
Officially, nobody now remembers this night of the weak knees. It rated a brief and embarrassed mention in Hugh Sidey's Time column, and that was it. But I shall not forget how some of those in supposed authority decided that the end had come, and made it a point to keep it to themselves and their immediate friends, perhaps to stop the crowding of the roads. That's how it will be on the day of Armageddon, and that's why the citizen should always plan to outlive the state, rather than the other way round.
The whole cult of "national security" depends upon the cultivation of national insecurity. Our new "tsar" (and what a telling word that is) Tom Ridge gave another perfect example of this idiocy on Monday last. High alert . . . something "generic" ... nothing specific. This was the third occasion on which he had told the American people to be on anxious lookout for - nothing in particular. At least he did not descend to the level of stupidity attained by Governor Gray Davis of California the preceding month. Davis announced that the Golden Gate bridge was under threat on a specific day, thus clogging traffic while simultaneously tipping off any bomber who might have pencilled that day into his (and with al-Qaida it's always his) calendar.
People are not at their best when they are frightened, and this goes twice for people in government who are temporarily "dressed in a little brief authority". I give you the instance of that devout Christian campaigner John Ashcroft, now in control of the Department of Justice. As an immigrant with a green card, I find that my American wife and American children will not insure me against a secret arrest, against undisclosed evidence, against a verdict with no appeal, or against my execution in a secret ceremony. (As the New Yorker puts it this week, the above procedure is so secret that it may, in theory, already have occurred.) I am forced to admit that I have not, as an Englishman in America, suffered all that much from "racial profiling". In the past few weeks, indeed, I have been so enthusiastic about the progress of the war that I considered taking out citizenship papers as a gesture of solidarity. But now I feel that, though America can have my body, it can't have my habeas corpus.
(Click link above for the rest of the article.)
I thought it was from the Journal of Irreproducible Results.
Bin-Laden is not rich enough or smart enough to have a nuclear bomb. I believe he already dead. He can't escape from the most powerful country on the face of the earth.