World Terrorism : Weapons of Disruption Onging...

Whereas we have no masses, it certainly would be seriously challenging to deliver a "weapon of mass destruction" in the vast majority of geographical areas in the American West, as well as in many areas in the East and South. For instance, Montana is approximately the size of Germany, yet the population hovers only around a million (we have one representative in the House). There is no "metropolitan" area anywhere around, though Spokane is about three hundred miles away. Wyoming has more sheep than people. Utah has Salt Lake City and a few nearby populous areas. Nevada has two populated regional areas, Las Vegas and Reno. North and South Dakota have, well, a few folks here and there. Idaho folks are few and far between. I swear you can drive from San Antonio to El Paso without seeing a city policeman, because I've done it several times. Then there are Arizona, New Mexico, eastern California, inter alia. The point is we have a few population points, while the rest of the states are empty excepted for isolated small communities.Thus, out West we probably need to talk more about "weapons of disruption." (Some folks say "weapons of mass disruption," but we have no masses!)

You must ask yourself: What would I do if I were a terrorist (or a terrorism preparedness instructor) looking into the ramifications of launching a rural terrorism attack? Personally, I would concentrate on considering the consequences of disruption rather than mass destruction. Here are a few scenarios you might want consider when your local rural emergency management/response group gathers to discuss terrorism exercises.

1) Wildland Fire Incidents: Incendiary (mostly wildland) warfare has been used by military strategists for at least 2500 years, over a thousand years before the use of gunpowder. The western U.S. is disrupted, seriously disrupted, every year by wildland fires. Quite a few are started by humans, accidentally and purposefully. Starting dozens of major fires in a dozen western states could be a brilliant line of attack if militants wished to disrupt America. Thousands of security personnel could do nothing and the perpetrator/s would probably never be implicated, much less captured. Are you prepared?

2) Railroad Chemical Incidents: Many railroad main lines go through tunnels. A few strategically placed armor-piercing shells in a series of chlorine cars, along with appropriately staged derailments leaving the leaking cars in the tunnels, could shut down many main line routes in the West. Spin-off scenarios are numerous. Ready?

3) Flammable Liquid Incidents: Bridges are not easily brought down from below and approaches to bridge support structures are often highly visible and randomly monitored. However, on CNN we all have seen many tanker truck accidents involving burning hydrocarbons which have made bridge structures unusable. How hard would it be to have a few terrorists steal trucks and drive them (as opposed to hijacking planes and flying them) to strategic bridges over wide rivers or narrow gorges, ignite the gasoline (or diesel or crude), block the approaches with other incendiary or chemical releases, and make the structures extremely dangerous and impassible to highway traffic? Gotcha!

There are many variations of these themes. You probably have or can make up many more plausible, novel, and easily implemented rural-specific attack scenarios. Design exercises around them. If you want to stop terrorist events you must think like a terrorist and quit fighting last year's war!

Frederick J. (Fred) Cowie, Ph.D. E-mail: fredcowie@aol.com Phone: (24 hr cell) 406-431-3531 Website: fredcowie.com

Published on TaipeiTimes
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2006/01/06/2003287690

Sudan identified as hub for illicit nuclear deals

THE GUARDIAN , LONDON
Friday, Jan 06, 2006,Page 6
"Among the equipment purchased by Sudan there are dual-use goods whose use in Sudan appears implausible because of their high technological standard."

European intelligence assessment

International investigators and Western intelligence have for the first time named Sudan as a major conduit for sophisticated engineering equipment that could be used in nuclear weapons programs.

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment was imported into the African country over a three-year period before the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington in 2001 and has since disappeared, according to the Guardian newspaper's sources.

Western governments, UN detectives and international analysts trying to stem the illicit trade in weapons of mass destruction technology are alarmed by the black market trade.

A European intelligence assessment obtained by the Guardian says Sudan has been using front companies and third countries to import machine tools, gauges and high-tech processing equipment from Western Europe for its military industries in recent years.

But it says Sudan is also being used as a conduit, as much of the equipment is too sophisticated for the country.

"The suspicion arises that at least some of the machinery was not destined for or not only destined for Sudan," the assessment says. "Among the equipment purchased by Sudan there are dual-use goods whose use in Sudan appears implausible because of their high technological standard."

Western analysts and intelligence agencies suspect the equipment has been or is being traded by the nuclear proliferation racket headed by the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who admitted nuclear trading two years ago and is under house arrest in Islamabad.

Khan is known to have visited Sudan at least once between 1998 and 2002, and the suspicion is he may have used the country as a warehouse for the high-tech engineering equipment he was selling to Libya, Iran and North Korea for the assembly of centrifuges for enriching uranium, the most common way of building a nuclear bomb.

Sudan has been ravaged by internal conflicts for decades and has until recently been governed by an Islamist regime. Analysts point out that a "failing state" such as Sudan is an ideal candidate for the illicit trading.

David Albright, who is investigating the Khan network and tracks nuclear proliferation for the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said about ?20 million (US$34.6 million) worth of dual-use engineering equipment was imported by Sudan between 1999 and 2001.

The purchases were denominated in German marks (before the introduction of the euro), suggesting some of the equipment came from Germany.

Investigators say the machinery has not been found in Sudan. Nor has it been found in Libya, since Tripoli gave up its secret nuclear bomb project in December 2003. Given Osama bin Laden's long relationship with Sudan, there had been suspicions of al-Qaeda involvement. But the goods have not been found in Afghanistan either.

"A huge amount of dual-use equipment was bought by Sudan and people don't know where it went to," said Albright. "It's a big mystery. The equipment has not been found anywhere."

A senior international investigator confirmed that Sudan had been importing the material and that the transports had ceased in 2001.

"No one now seems to be buying," he said. "Perhaps the activity stopped because they got all that they needed."

Iran is also suspected of being behind the Sudanese dealings.

"There is the Khan network and then there is a much bigger network in this, and that is the Iranian network," said the investigator.

Yesterday, the Guardian reported that Iran had been seeking the equipment needed to build a nuclear bomb.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/greenberg010606.asp

Paul Greenberg Shocking discovery: President determined to defend U.S.

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |

Dana Priest of The Washington Post sounds shocked — shocked! — to discover that George W. Bush ordered a complete remobilization and reinvigoration of the CIA immediately after September 11th:

"The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al-Qaida has grown into the largest CIA covert-action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over clandestine tactics . . . ."

This is news? Isn't this just what W. told the country he would do in the aftermath of September 11th?

"Ours will be a broad campaign, fought on many fronts. It's a campaign that will be waged by day and by night, in the light and in the shadow, in battles that you will see and battles you won't see. It's a campaign waged by soldiers and sailors, marines and airmen; and also by FBI agents and law-enforcement officials and diplomats and intelligence officers. . . . Our campaign will be difficult, and it will take time. But I can promise you this: It will be waged with determination, and it will be waged until we win. We will do whatever it takes to protect our country." — George W. Bush, Oct. 17, 2001.

Apparently W. meant it. According to the Post's Ms. Priest, the president signed an order six days after September 11th empowering American intelligence agencies in a way not seen since the Second World War.

Gosh, just as if we had suffered a surprise attack and thousands of our people had been killed in a second Pearl Harbor.

Do you think maybe the president decided to fight this like a world war because, far ahead of his critics, he realized we were in one? The result: A moribund CIA was suddenly brought to life, just as the FBI and OSS were during the last great world war.

To quote Ms. Priest: "The CIA faced the day after the attacks with few al-Qaida informants, a tiny paramilitary division and no interrogators, much less a system for transporting suspected terrorists and keeping them hidden for interrogation."

A lot has changed since then. The CIA proved instrumental, if not decisive, in winning a war in Afghanistan. It is helping to win another in Iraq. It has made covert alliances with foreign intelligence services across the globe, has been given billions of dollars to set up counter-terrorism operations in two dozen countries, and is reported to have set up secret prisons — excuse me, ahem, detainment centers — in at least eight other friendly countries. And inevitably, to borrow a phrase Ronald Reagan used a couple of decades ago, Mistakes Were Made. Just as they are in every war.

And yet this president has persisted even as his critics at home and abroad profess to be shocked at his having carried out his promise to the American people.

Other presidents have been careful to arrange political cover when they authorize a covert war; this one proclaimed his. What ever happened to deniability, a phrase that grew familiar during the Nixon presidency and debacle?

This president not only gave the order to launch this campaign but has taken responsibility for it. What's more, he apparently wants to know just how his orders are being carried out. As if he were commander-in-chief. Goodness. Some of us thought they'd stopped making presidents like that after Harry Truman.

John Radsan, a former counsel with the CIA, seems unhappy with the president's insistence on knowing just what's going on: "In the past, presidents set up buffers to distance themselves from covert action. But this president, who's breaking down the boundaries between covert action and conventional war, seems to relish the secret findings and the dirty details of the operations."

Gosh, just as if we were engaged in a new, unconventional world war that needs to be fought in a new, unconventional way. It's called asymmetrical warfare, one in which an aggressor without a national base can use a worldwide network of terrorists to wreak havoc on an unprepared country.

In this new kind of warfare, an ever-surprised, ever-vulnerable America, was supposed to be easy pickings for these new kamikazes. This country was going to be reduced to cowering behind defenses full of holes.

Instead, this president and this country have taken the offensive — "in battles that you will see and battles you won't see." And at home and abroad, those unhappy with the results are joining in a single chorus: Unfair!

And the unfairest thing of all is the way the CIA has been conducting this secret war — well, mostly secret till The New York Times reveals still another classified document.

Naturally the new, reborn CIA would rile our enemies most; it has been the most successful of American agencies in this war on al-Qaida. To quote Ms. Priest, "The CIA, working with foreign counterparts, has been responsible for virtually all of the success the United States has had in capturing or killing al-Qaida leaders since Sept. 11, 2001."

What's more, the CIA apparently intends to continue tracking down every one of these killers. It seems to feel it's engaged in defending the country, as when it uses predator drones to dispatch al-Qaida leaders with the help of a Hellfire missile or two. Instead of first reading the suspect his rights.

To quote the deputy director of national intelligence, a general named Michael Hayden: "We're going to live on the edge. My spikes will have chalk on them. . . . We're pretty aggressive within the law. As a professional, I'm troubled if I'm not using the full authority allowed by the law."

Yes, shocking. Some of us had no idea they made American intelligence agents that way anymore. And we're much assured they still do.

Why not treat the attacks on this country as a problem in civil law enforcement and escape all the criticism now being directed at this administration?

Because, to quote a former CIA agent named Dewey Clarridge, "You have a spy agency because the spy agency is going to break laws overseas. If you don't want it to do those dastardly things, don't have it. You can have the State Department." Yes, just leave national security to the State Department. Now that's frightening.

But what, in the end, do we have to show for these tactics that have raised eyebrows in every law school in the country? Only that Americans haven't experienced a terrorist attack on our shores since September 11, 2001.

I know the folks responsible for the CIA's secret successes aren't interested in public recognition. Quite the contrary. But let's hope they all get medals. In a secret ceremony.

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They not only know, Jason....they have the schematics:

SECURITY
Al Qaeda agent cased Washington Beltway overpass
More evidence of Jihadi terrorists working highway targets? The FBI's terrorism taskforce found shredded engineering plans ("blueprints") of the Connecticut Avenue Capital Beltway MD overpass in the Brooklyn NY apartment of Syrian-born Hassan Faraj after they arrested him in June. Faraj is a doctor! An affidavit by Faraj promising financial support to prospective immigrant to the US, Amir Abdulrazzak, the FBI says, is an indication of links to al Qaeda since Abdulrazzak is an al Qaeda associate. Also prosecutors say Faraj worked in Croatia for a Jihadi front organization in the early 1990s. (Based on AP report 2004-11-06)

In another incident of apparent target casing, on August 20 an associate of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, Ismail Selim Elbarasse and his family were stopped by police after they were observed videotaping vulnerable points in the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. They behaved furtively at first denying they had camera equipment which was then found hidden among belongings in their van. (snip)
http://www.tollroadsnews.com/cgi-bin/a.cgi/t3TBfDE5EdmcEIJ61nsxIA

Why? Because they're HERE.

They're teaching in the Universities, they're driving the tanker trucks, they're locking up the bio-chem labs, etc. etc. etc.

It'll take you a while to read through it all, but it'll be an eye-opening experience for you. I'm sure your insight would be welcomed.

Please do start with Thread One. The links to the threads are posted here in post #1:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1541389/posts

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