Has U.S. threatened to vaporize Mecca?

World Net Daily ^ | 1-7-05

[hope]

to vaporize Mecca?

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Friday, January 7, 2005

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Has U.S. threatened
to vaporize Mecca?
Intelligence expert says nuke option is reason bin Laden has been quiet

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Posted: January 7, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern

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© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

Why hasn't Osama bin Laden's terror network executed an attack on U.S. soil since 9-11?

Simple, says Dr. Jack Wheeler, creator of an acclaimed intelligence website dubbed "the oasis for rational conservatives": The U.S. has threatened to nuke the Muslim holy city of Mecca should the terror leader strike America again.

On his website, To the Point, Wheeler explains how the Bush administration has identified the potential of wiping Mecca off the map as bin Laden's ultimate point of vulnerability – the Damoclean Sword hanging over his head.

"Israel … recognizes that the Aswan Dam is Egypt's Damoclean Sword," writes Wheeler. "There is no possibility whatever of Egypt's winning a war with Israel, for if Aswan is blown, all of inhabited Egypt is under 20 feet of water. Once the Israelis made this clear to the Egyptians, the possibility of any future Egyptian attack on Israel like that of 1948, 1967, and 1972 is gone."

Wheeler says talk of bin Laden's Damoclean Sword has infiltrated the Beltway.

Writes Wheeler in his members-only column: "There has been a rumor floating in the Washington ether for some time now that George Bush has figured out what Sword of Damocles is suspended over Osama bin Laden's head. It's whispered among Capitol Hill staffers on the intel and armed services committees; White House NSC (National Security Council) members clam up tight if you begin to hint at it; and State Department neo-cons love to give their liberal counterparts cardiac arrhythmia by elliptically conversing about it in their presence.

"The whispers and hints and ellipses are getting louder now because the rumor explains the inexplicable: Why hasn't there been a repeat of 9-11? How can it be that after this unimaginable tragedy and Osama's constant threats of another, we have gone over three years without a single terrorist attack on American soil?"

Available only to subscribers of To the Point, Wheeler ends his column by explaining the effectiveness of the Mecca threat.

"Completely obliterating the terrorists' holiest of holies, rendering what is for them the world's most sacred spot a radioactive hole in the ground is retribution of biblical proportions – and those are the only proportions that will do the job.

"Osama would have laughed off such a threat, given his view that Americans are wussies who cut and run after a few losses, such as Lebanon in 1983 and Somalia in 1993. Part of Bush's rationale for invading Afghanistan and Iraq – obviously never expressed publicly – was to convince Osama that his threat to nuke Mecca was real. Osama hates America just as much as ever, but he is laughing no more."

Wheeler says bin Laden is "playing poker with a Texas cowboy holding the nuclear aces," so there's nothing al-Qaida could do that could come remotely close to risking obliterating Mecca.

Writes Wheeler: "So far, Osama has decided not to see if GW is bluffing. Smart move."

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Subscribe to Wheeler's To the Point intelligence website and read insightful, clear analysis every day.

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[Conspiracy Guy]

Great idea. What day and time do you want me to nuke it?

[Semper Vigilantis]

"This is really a very unfortunate rumor. Here we are enguaged in a war trying to enlist the help of the average Iraqi on the street, and here some well meaning (or NOT) dufus is lofting a hypothetical that sees us destroying the most sacred shrine known to those very Iraqi folks on the street. This is what one might call a wedge issue. It couldn't be designed better to separate us from potential allies, if it were designed by Laden himself."

Agreed. Looks like someone needed an article on a slow news day and didn't consider the big picture consequences.

AFA the article's premise that OBL is held in check by a threat to Mecca: BS. OBL doesn't care about anything but OBL. Islam is a means to an end to him.

[TexasCowboy]

Texans learn how to play poker in their highchairs.

In this case, OBL would be betting into four aces with a pair of deuces.

[Former Proud Canadian]

Re post 115, that is my understanding, also.

[dennisw]

You blow up Mecca, be prepared to drill Alaska or go without oil for a long time.

Mecca is far away from Saudi Arabia's oil fields. Most Arab oil fields are not near the large population centers you've read about

[cardinal4]

Once the Israelis made this clear to the Egyptians, the possibility of any future Egyptian attack on Israel like that of 1948, 1967, and 1972 is gone."

Im pretty sure that last war was in '73..

[bert]

It's called "The Last Crusade"

The ultimate protection of the Holy Land is the extirmination of the basis for Islam.

Templar thought etched on a modern granite slab.

"Don't mess with Texas"

[lentulusgracchus]

Talking about nuking Mecca just makes us all sound like a bunch of Rambo-mesmerized CHUDs. We're not going to nuke Mecca, but it might be useful if Osama thought we might. Then he wouldn't get to be the guardian of the shrines, which is his ultimate choirboy ego trip.

That all said, and if memory is a guide, a 50-megaton thermonuclear device creates a crater about six miles in diameter and 600 feet deep. That's with an air burst close to surface. (Someone correct my figures.) A penetration warhead of the same yield, detonating beneath the surface, would make a much bigger hole.

Fifty megatons is about what it would take to eject the involved mass of earth from the atmosphere and put it into orbit around the sun.

Not that there's any particular reason why I'd think of that.

[RightOnline]

"This isn't the time to stab our guys in the back, while they're trying to win converts."

It is, apparently, an unfortunate truth that the Middle Eastern cultures understand force or the threat of force...........and little else.

Such a threat could also encourage them to put heat on Osama and his wrecking crew.

[mdmathis6]

Uhhh....Muslim extremists aready feel alienated from us....Nuking Mecca won't do anything more but make them more brazen. If we do nothing about them, then over the long run they'll get more brazen anyway!

[bert]

.....except alienate almost all the Muslims in the world.....

I think it would destroy the religion.

I think it would cause such unimagineable confusion that there would be suicides rather than retribution. Millions prostrate themselves facing Mecca to make prayers 5 times a day. Millions have the Haj obligation to visit Mecca.

If the place is gone and not rebuildable, If Allah has demonstrated his inability to prohibit the destruction, Allah has obviuosly abandoned his people. Abandonment leads to suicide.

[lentulusgracchus]

Dubya isn't Cecil Rhodes.

I doubt he is anything like the imperialist you make him out to be.

As long as someone is bringing the Middle East's oil to market in an orderly fashion, I don't think he or Cheney cares who owns it, who sells it, or who gets paid. They care about markets and threats to the markets, not about ownership of resources. After all, markets are about discounting resources -- mineral, labor, energy, you name it. As long as the markets are working (note the caveat), Bush and Cheney have what they want: orderly markets in which their client audience of New York middlemen can pencil-whip the producers and farmers to death.

That's been the U.S. economic model (at least in part) since the Civil War.

[EQAndyBuzz]

"Mecca is far away from Saudi Arabia's oil fields. Most Arab oil fields are not near the large population centers you've read about."

I wasn't referring to the oil fields being blown up. More along the lines of we will not receive any more Saudi oil.

[hopespringseternal]

Nuking Mecca won't accomplish anything, except alienate almost all the Muslims in the world.

Islam is not a spiritual religion, it is very physical. Nuking Mecca alone would be a huge blow to the Muslim psyche, systematically destroying every major "holy place" and mosque would be a direct and overt challenge of Allah himself. It would be like Elijah and the Baal prophets on Mt. Carmel or Moses and the plagues on Egypt.

It would break the back of Islam. You would have a few diehard crazies staying on the path of jihad but most Muslims the world over would simply abandon the religion. It is far too dependent on the symbols and appearance of power to survive humiliation. Besides the crazies (who are already there doing mischeif anyway) any believers left would transform Islam into a much more spiritual, and therefore peaceful religion.

[lentulusgracchus]

I think it would cause such unimagineable confusion that there would be suicides rather than retribution.

Really? Remember what medieval Christians did to the "Christ-killers" in their midst. Then they did it again, 500 years later, in spades -- and the Jews hadn't given any real cause for offense, other than lending a little cash and doing well in business.

[MEGoody]

"Nuking Mecca won't accomplish anything, except alienate almost all the Muslims in the world. But threatening Damascus, Khartoum or any other potential terrorist- harboring states is more practical. Even that Libyan leader is untrustworthy."

I agree with you in everything but one. I don't know that nuking Mecca would alienate that many more Muslims than already hate America. I'm against it becuase using nukes at this point (unless, perhaps, the terrorists use nukes against us) would be opening a can of worms I don't think we want to open.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Nuking Mecca won't accomplish anything,...

It would END their religion. No longer could they bow and pray to a stone idol or make the required pilgrimmage to it...

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...except alienate almost all the Muslims in the world.

Most of the WOMEN in the "Muslim world" would probably cheer...