Posted on 12/15/2002 10:50:57 AM PST by Mossad1967
President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have been warned Osama bin Laden has 20 suitcase nuclear weapons obtained for cash from former KGB agents, the London Sunday Express reports in tomorrow's editions.
Last October, WorldNetDaily broke the story of bin Laden’s suitcase nukes, detailed in a new book by an FBI consultant on international terrorism.
The book,''Al Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror,'' by Paul L. Williams, says bin Laden purchased 20 suitcase nuclear weapons in 1998 from former KGB agents for $30 million. The deal is reportedly one of three in the last decade in which al-Qaida purchased small nuclear weapons or weapons-grade nuclear uranium.
Williams says bin Laden's search for nuclear weapons began in 1988 when he hired a team of five nuclear scientists from Turkmenistan. These were former employees at the atomic reactor in Iraq before it was destroyed by Israel, Williams says. The team's project was the development of a nuclear reactor that could be used ''to transform a very small amount of material that could be placed in a package smaller than a backpack.''
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
Never heard of it...is this supposed to be one of those "what did he know and when did he know it" articles?
Yes, if they thought like you do, but they do not. They are following their own strategy, which calls for hitting us with one thing at a time, over and over again, maybe gradually increasing the heat as well. Whether it will actually "work" or not (and I believe that it will not) is not the point -- if they think this will work, this is what they will do, whether it makes sense to us or not.
This is the very reason why I have tended to doubt the speculation about "suitcase/backpack" nukes either stashed in the US by the KGB or for sale on the black market. Any such small weapons would essentially have to be kept dissambled in Russia and put together shortly before use, and thus it is not credible that any such assembled, "live" weapons would be in storage anywhere for long periods of time. Somewhat larger portable weapons however, approximately the size of a steamer trunk, are considerably more "shelf stable", and could feasibly be assembled and stored for several years at a time without maintenance. These somewhat larger but still portable weapons would have a considerably greater yield, and would have the advantage of not having to be placed so very close to their target. For example, carrying it in the back of a station waggon or SUV, one would only need to drive within maybe a half mile of the intended target and still be reasonably certain of taking it out. (Unless it is very deep underground and very hardened -- and then the damage to the surface infrastructure would still make life pretty difficult for those inside the target.) Thus, it seems more credible to me that the Soviets might have created such a portable weapon for their arsenal, and it is even not out of the realm of possibility that a few could have been smuggled into the US and stashed away for use by sabboteurs at the onset of a major war. One can easily imagine that Soviet planners would presume that as tensions escalated in the days leading up to a major war, it is unlikely that one of their agents would be able to just walk up unchallenged to a military base, government building, or critical infrastructure site with a large, heavy backpack strapped on and sending out lots of radiation due to minimum shielding. They would certainly assume that security would tighten up, and the best their agents might be able to do would be to drive close, but not right next to, the desired target.
The bad news is that if an SUV carrying such a device were to detonate it even several blocks away from the US Capitol during a State of the Union address, for example, the damage to our government would be massive. Or such a device detonated anywhere in the NYC financial district during weekday business hours, for example.
Oh I don't know, Bhagdad maybe? Obviously, we'd need to verify that the orders came from there first. If we can't, perhaps Mecca would make a nice glow at night...
I don't think so. They will carefully put the devices in place at selected targets and then detonate one or two of them to demonstrate that they have them and are willing to use them.
Then they will use nuclear blackmail either overtly or covertly to get what they want. After they get what they want, they may still detonate some of the devices.
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