Free Republic

Thanks for the warm welcome! Hope I can add something useful to these discussions occasionally.

These latest coordinated attempts to cause conflicts between branches of Islam are very worrying. This is actually part of an ongoing attempt to destabilize the governments in Iraq and Pakistan. (Similar attacks on Shias happened last week in Saudi Arabia.) This effort was also behind the attempts to kill Musharrif in Pakistan.

AQ knows that having radical Islamic governments installed in Pakistan (nukes) and Saudi (oil) would be a tremendous blow to the West. Especially if continued conflict in Iraq kept large numbers of coalition troops "fixed" in place there for any lenght of time. Let's hope the Shia's understand that this is an effort to mainipulate them. (And that the Iranians stay on the sidelines.) It could well backfire in AQ's face and actually promote greater efforts to coexist. (Here's hoping...)

I forget who mentioned smallpox above, but let me assure you there have been no confirmed cases of Smallpox anywhere. That would be a world health emergency of unprecedented proportions, and couldn't be kept quiet. That region (South Asia) has many endemic illnesses that appear periodically. (Some of which have also been researched as BW.) I see some of you are familiar with ProMed mail, which is a great way to get the scoop from the horse's mouth on infectious diseases. (Now *there* is a mixed metaphor for you!) For example, a case of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever in Kandahar is not surprising. Fifty cases in Cleveland would be a different story...

Speaking of bioterrorism, I see on Steve Quayles site that he thinks some sort of airborne disease was intentionally unleashed on US bases in Germany. Not so. It happened on German bases, and is a an unusually bad case of known disease. A poor Dutch translation initially referred to US bases, but it was later corrected.

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=52&story_id=4888

(Has he ever gotten anything right, prediction wise? My personal rule of thumb, is that if a website has links to people who want to sell me Gold, I take everything else with a pinch of salt...)

Anyway. It's lunchtime, so I'm off.

I've been lurking hereabouts for quite a while now, and this seemed like as good a place as any to jump in.

I would tend to agree with Iron Eagle's perspective, i.e., the probablility that terrorist have smuggled any significant number of nuclear bombs into the US is extremely low. So far.

The current existence of the oft mentioned "Ex-Soviet suitecase nukes" is in itself highly unlikely. For those of you interested in an extremely thoughtful, well-researched study on suitcase nukes, let me refer you to these excellent open-source papers at the Monterey Intitute of Interenational Studies:

http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/020923.htm
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/040213.htm

As to if there are currently *any* nuclear weapons hidden within the US, I am rather less certain these days than I once was. Last year when NorthCom decided to include a small nuclear explosion in the planning for the recent United Defense 04 excercise scenario, there was a fair amount of eyeball roling. Some wags predicted that UD05 would probably include an alien landing, because the nuke idea was so improbable.

But they did it anyway, and since then the revelations about Mr. Khan's Atomic Walmmart have caused many people to completely re-assess the risk from smuggled nuclear weapons, and the UD04 scenario doesn't seem nearly as silly now as it did a year ago. Unfortunately, the idea has moved solidly from impossible to unlikely. So far. But the atomic genie is absolutely out of the bottle, and I suspect that the lengthy success of Mr. Khan's enterprise will go down as one of the greatest failures of intelligence and/or western political will in history.

So: Ex-soviet suitcase nukes? Probably nothing to worry about now, except perhaps as ready made dirty bombs. But IMHO, the existence (and possibly even presence) of 1-3 small nuclear bombs built with Pakistani or North Korean expertise and sold as "turn key" units to extremists just isn't as outlandish an idea now as it was a year ago. And believe me: 1 or 2 well-located bombs would be enough to destroy the US economy for a decade. Which is of course where our real international strength is.

I consider "dirty bombs" a much greater likelihood, and nearly as great a threat to the US/world economy. Mainly because the current conventional wisdom is that there is "no safe level" of exposure to radiation. Under that standard, even a small dirty bomb in an important area could make it unusable for many years. However in reality, there probably *is* a safe exposure level, i.e., low enough that constant exposure to it would still kill you, but it would take 200 years. But for now, no one is suggesting revisitng these zero-tolerance guidelines adopted during the No Nukes movements of the 70's and 80's. The political cost is too great, and low-tech people are simply too frightened of radiation of any kind. However if there is a Dirty Bomb set off, don't be surprised if the USG suddenly unveils new "standards" for safe exposure. They are the insurer of last resort, remember, and they (i.e., *you*) can't pay for the loss of, say, lower Manhattan and the health maintainance of a million people for 50 years. They would have no choice but to move the goal posts. And they would probably be right, bizarrely enough. Oh: and do the bad guys have the wherewithal to build and employ a dirty bomb? Take a look at this other table of data from the site mentioned above, showing all the reported instances where the Bad Guys have tried to aquire radionucleids:

http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/other/sjm_cht.htm

It's been a long day, and I'm beginning to ramble. Sorry about that. I guess I just don't want folks to get too worked up about a Nuke in every city. It just isn't very likely at this point. And as others have mentioned, if they had them, why haven't they used them? (Every January, I watch the State of the Union Address with my heart in my throat.) But so far, so good.... ;)