[Sean Osborne Lomax]

Good info there Just Piper.

Brings up yet another question.

It is often put forward, primarily by rank and file Leftists, but... in the event of a nuclear strike against the USA by some terrorist organization who does the US respond in kind against?

Answer: should such an attack occur we will know where the plutonium for the device originated. That's who we will hold responsible.

Is this the reason as an aside to and a part of Russian domestic political concerns for the impending Russian live-fire nuclear exercise? Are they telling us: "America, when you loose one of your cities to a device of our manufacture, do not retaliate against the Russian Federation because we will respond against you.

How do you show solidarity or an alliance with another country in a war against terrorism... by running total global nuclear warfare exercises against them??? I don't see the Ruskies targeting the DPRK or the Chicoms. I don't see jihadi terrorists threats against the other nations in the TransAsian Axis of Evil. I see the TransAsian Axis member nation Iran harboring people like Ayman al-Zawahiri and OBL until recently.

I also see a bogus operation last year at a Moscow theater where Russian SOF/OMON forces ensured there were no survivors. They killed 'em all, "terrorists" and civilian hostages alike with Chemical weapons. They also shot them all point blank in the head just to make sure. ((((Right, a convoy of heavily armed Chechens drives unimpeded through the streets of Moscow? ROTFL, where is that turnip truck I fell off of???)))

They have their alibi, or so they think.

I ain't buying it, but you and a few others here already know that. :)

[SCR1]

If a device is detonated, is it possible to determine the origin of the radiactive material? How long would that determination take?

Would an appropriate response be the use of a weapon of about the same size on a city from which country the bomb material came from?

[JustPiper]

Sean...the only question on my mind now is the method of delivery and even if Russia doesn't "Push the RED Button persay, they are behind the underworld of getting these dangerous materials to any rogue nation not NK

[Iron Eagle]

It is often put forward, primarily by rank and file Leftists, but... in the event of a nuclear strike against the USA by some terrorist organization who does the US respond in kind against?

Answer: should such an attack occur we will know where the plutonium for the device originated. That's who we will hold responsible.

Well, I posited that question here, and I am no leftist. In fact, I am not only a Reagan Republican, pro-life Conservative, but I also have run for office as a Republican ... twice. (I received the endorsement of President Bush last time).

Your answer is interesting. So, we have an active nuclear black market. We have scores of "unaccounted" for suitcase nukes, and we are going to just nuke the Russian Federation because of evidence of the "origination" of the device.

That may explain why you do this analysis as a "hobby."

What do we do if the origin of the materials is Oak Ridge? What if it is from a previously unknown origin? What if it is from the Russian Federation, circa 1970? But we don't know how, who, where it came from? We are going to unleash nuclear war and likely total destruction of both Countries, if not the world because the materials in the bomb were produced and once in the possession of a country?

Get serious.

The question of against whom we retaliate is bigger today than ever. First, we need to solve the real question of who. We also have an even bigger problem. Our enemy -- AQ -- is sub-national. Do we hit every country in which their members move about conducting business? If so, do we strike ourselves, the French, the Germans, etc.? Is it the new policy of the U.S. to eliminate civilians with nuclear weapons when we don't even know who hit us.

And, why is the question of proof bigger today than ever before? Because our intelligence on Iraqi WMD's appears to be either faulty, wrong, or incomplete. In any case, many of our own citizens don't have much comfort in our intelligence, let alone our allies that went out on a limb with us.

Now, admittedly, we probably should have checked with the NEIN before going to war, but we can't rewrite that history.

If we are hit with a nuclear strike, radiological bomb, or other WMD in a U.S. city, no one will thirst for blood more than I. But, we are not going to look for Red buttons to push the minute the analysis comes back from the lab and points to the U.S. of materials in the weapon consistent with another Country's production.

Hell, if eliminating AQ and the bad guys was so easy, we would have done it already. President Bush was right post 9/11. This is a different war. It will be fought over many, many years, and it is unlike any war we have known. Frankly, he needs to do a better job of communicating that to the American people, who wrongly see attacks as unconnected acts of terrorism.