20 minutes after a nuke goes off in America....
Think hard: is your global jihad worth it?
Posted on 04/24/2002 8:05:27 PM PDT by Icthus
A former chief of the Strategic Air Command predicted today that it is inevitable that the United States will someday face a terrorist attack using such weapons as a small nuclear bomb.
Retired Gen. Eugene E. Habiger outlined a chilling scenario in which terrorists detonate a 2-kiloton nuclear bomb that kills and injures thousands, cripples the federal government and sows panic across America.
The little bomb in the trunk of a car “is easy to make, is easy to detonate and can cause a lot of damage,” said Habiger, who retired from the military in 1998.
“I think it's not a matter of if, it's when,” he told the San Antonio Express-News. “It could be anyplace.”
Habiger, president of the San Antonio Water System, offered that grim assessment during a luncheon at Fiesta TechNet 2002, an information technology conference that wrapped up today.
His suitcase nuke scenario is unlike any attack yet on the nation, even last fall's strike against the World Trade Center, and it drew quick reaction from a surprised Bush administration official, who said, “I don't know why he would say it.”
The White House National Office of Homeland Security wouldn't say if the government could prevent the detonation of a suitcase nuke or a “dirty” bomb — one in which conventional explosives distribute radioactive material.
“We are working to prevent that from happening,” agency spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
In Habiger's vision the small bomb kills tens of thousands in the Washington area. Fallout most likely spreads south from the District of Columbia. Intense fires from the blast leave thousands more within a 2-mile radius of the center with second-degree burns, and cuts and abrasions due to glass and building damage.
All six of the district’s Potomac River bridges would be damaged, cutting the city off from Virginia, preventing emergency vehicles from reaching the dead and injured.
Power outages, gas line explosions, water cutoffs, disruption of public transit systems and the federal government itself — including the Pentagon and White House — would ensue, as well as mass panic around the United States.
“The thing that you didn't see in the World Trade Center tower event were thousands of people lying dead in the streets, and with a nuclear device of some kind you're going to see that,” he predicted after his speech. “It's going to become much more personal.”
sigc@express-news.net
20 minutes after a nuke goes off in America....
Think hard: is your global jihad worth it?
We do not necessariyl face a nuclear strike. We do not need to spend our billions protecting airports. We do not need to live in fear.
If the terrorists knew that their respective countries would be leveled, there would be no strikes again us, nuclear or any other.
I certainly hope you are right about our response, Travis. The problem is, the terrorist have to believe we will respond this way.
The part that the general overlooks is that we have radiation monitors on ships, land, in the sky, as well as on customs/INS personnel and in the military.You would really have to shield a nuke to get it in here without a missile (and we'll have the missile option covered soon enough - circa 2004).
One can also assume that one of the few tasks that our spooks do well is to monitor those places in the world capable of manufacturing weapons grade materials.
Sounds great in theory, but in practice our radiation monitors are just random spotchecks. It isn't that difficult to fully encase nuclear material in a lead jacket and shield it from monitors. Only a fraction of the cargo sent into the US is checked every day. And there are other ways to smuggle radioactive material into the US which have been successfully used by drug cartels...from small private boats or airplanes flying below radar level, to fixing materials to bottom of ships with magnets and recovering with scuba gear.
No, General, prevailing winds would blow stuff in Northeast direction.
You're probably right. If a bomb is already here, which it could be, how could they stop it?
The borders should have been closed, but that didn't happen. Nor did the INS ship out those who are here illegally.
I felt much safer before 9/11, that's for sure.
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