Posted on 12/23/2001 4:21:04 PM PST by blam
Uranium and cyanide found in drums at bin Laden base
By Barbie Dutter in Kandahar and Ben Fenton
(Filed: 24/12/2001)
URANIUM has been found in an al-Qa'eda base outside Kandahar - the first evidence that Osama bin Laden had obtained materials for a nuclear arsenal, it was revealed yesterday.
The discovery gives some credibility to the fear that he could unleash a weapon of mass destruction as his dying act.
Anti-Taliban leaders in Kandahar revealed that the uranium and other materials, including cyanide, had been discovered in a tunnel complex beneath the former base near the city's airport. The find was confirmed by American officials.
It was also revealed that when tribal forces took the al-Qa'eda complex earlier this month they found hundreds of jars, drums and metal cases in an underground labyrinth at the desert compound where Arab fighters staged a bloody last stand before Kandahar was surrendered by the Taliban.
The cache included low-grade uranium 238, which could be used to make a so-called "dirty bomb" if wrapped around a conventional explosive. It would spread radiation over a large area.
Specialised equipment and facilities would be needed to turn uranium 238 into a fissile device like the Hiroshima bomb, and so it would not be suitable for building such a weapon.
American intelligence officials told Newsweek magazine that al-Qa'eda had enough of the material to make a "dirty bomb" and it seems certain that their knowledge is based on the discovery at Kandahar airport.
Haji Gullalai, now the interim intelligence chief for Kandahar province, told The Telegraph that immediately after capturing the airport area, his men had entered one tunnel and discovered the materials in a vast underground workshop.
The find was reported the same day to "international military personnel", thought to be American special forces, who sent experts wearing masks and protective clothing to examine the substances, Mr Gullalai said.
He added: "We knew we were not well equipped to deal with these things so we called in foreign experts who told us it was uranium.
"For our own safety we did not touch the bottles but from a distance we saw there were hundreds of different kinds of containers - small jars and big jars, sealed with metal lids and containing powders and liquids, white and yellowish in colour.
"There were big drums the size of petrol drums and metal boxes with sides seven or eight inches thick. The bottles were labelled in four different languages - Chinese, Russian, Arabic and English."
American officials said that Russia, the states of the former Soviet Union, China and Pakistan were all possible sources for the uranium.
It has been estimated that several hundred Arab al-Qa'eda fighters were killed in the battle for the airport, led by Gul Agha - now Kandahar's new governor - with Mr Gullalai playing a senior commanding role.
The area where the tunnels were found is known locally as Turnak Farms. It is thought to have been the al-Qa'eda network's principal training and military base in southern Afghanistan and and held up to 1,800 people.
Kandahar airport has now been taken over by around 1,500 US marines and coalition forces.
Certainly true, but you left out how the uranium found cannot be used in a nuclear bomb. I'll worry about the destruction of North America just as soon as I know that those with willingness to do it have the capability to do it.
What makes us think Ossama does not have the capability? The Paks and North Koreans clearly have the capability--the Pak scientists who are ducking us in Burma have clearly consulted with Ossama about how to use it; the North Koreans need foreign exchange and Ossama has lots.
As to the Ollie North issue about hitting the adversary with your best punch first (if he could have nuked us, he would have done that first), the answer is that this war, from his point of view, is a work in process. His initial goal is to hit us hard enough to prove he can inflict damage and thereby attract support from the militant Islamic community. However there will be adverse organizational side effects from a nuclear attack that will be counterproductive to his effort to organize a widespread attack on Western Civilization and thus he will hold that weapon until either he is at risk to defeat if he does not use it or alternatively until he feels he can use it without impairing his international Islamic support.
Remember that delusional video? He thought his Taliban and al Qaeda forces would beat us into the ground. He just didn't have time to make a dirty bomb in Afghanistan.
That is in part what I was trying to convey.
I was thinking that our response was unexpected and overwhelming in the immediate term. If he is still alive and we do not eventually get him. He'll not make that mistake again. (Now, about his successor....?)
I doubt it, but if it happens, I hope OUR "dying act" is to nuke Mecca.
You bet he won't make this mistake again--but also notice that I said, "in Afghanistan." Finding this stuff in Afghanistan doesn't mean that's the only stash. It could be at any al Qaeda cell worldwide.
Dirty bombs are constrained by the difficulty of getting the stuff where you want to detonate it without killing yourself first or having it disappear due to decay. As a rule, the more lethal the isotope, the shorter its half-life. Even if you get access to reactor waste, it will decay away in days or weeks. Hard to transport it from Afghanistan (or more likely a Russian reactor) to here, especially when there are radiation detectors at the international airports.
If you use longer-lived medical or industrial waste like cesium-137 or cobalt-60, and have enough to build a significant dirty bomb (kilogram quantities) it is still dangerous to someone carrying it around in a suitcase unshielded. Shielding lethal quantities of these materials requires hundreds of pounds of lead.
The most likely scenario in my opinion would be a freighter with lead shielding in the holds, containing a few hundred pounds of cesium or cobalt and a large conventional bomb. Before 9/11 it would have been rather simple to sail it into NY harbor and detonate it, but I bet that is not the case any longer.
-ccm
Every time I encounter PC, no matter from who or in what circumstances, I ridicule it and tell the person making the statement essentially that they are a dangerous fool.
In a recent discussion at work, a manager was extoling on a a theme that "sure the terrorist attacks on this country were bad but we must "understand that those people have a point of view that we have ignored and in their point of view those attacks were justified." I jumped right in and told her that "I don't give a rats a** what their point of view is, nothing justifies that kind of action." I also told her that it was viewpoints like hers that creates the impression with terrorists that we will tolerate violent acts like this. Everyone else in the room agreed with me and she she quickly learned that that PC expressions will quickly get you verbally pounded into the ground.
I believe we must hammer it down wherever and whenever it rears its ugly head. I plan to never let a PC remark go unridiculed and unlabeled as "political correctness like that that allowed 9-11 to happen".
It has been my experience that people who are (or have been) proponents of PC, have no courage of their convictions once they see that those attitudes make them unpopular. Political Correctness succeeds only as long as it is popular within the "in-groups". By making it both unpopular and a locus of ridicule, we can, at the grass roots level, destroy it to the extent that only a few die-hard liberals will hang on to it.
You can count me in.
I have to leave now but will come back before going to bed. Don't go to any trouble; I can do the search. I just need a name or some keywords to save time and thought someone here may have a link sitting around already. Thanks in advance!
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