An attempted terrorist attack on the United States in the next few years is “a certainty.”
This opinion is held by Leon Panetta, Director of the CIA, Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the FBI, Robert Mueller.
Unfortunately, these three agree not only that an attack is a certainty but they also agree that the weapon most likely to be used is a nuclear bomb.
There has been ample speculation about why there have been no major terrorist attacks against the United States since 9/11. Some would like to believe that DHS, TSA, FBI, NSA, CIA, NRO, ATF, ICE and all the other three-letter agencies charged with preserving our safety are doing a crack-up job of stopping terrorism dead in its tracks.
Wiser heads don’t buy this improved enforcement theory for a second. Our borders are as porous as ever. The recent, almost comic, attempt of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Underwear Bomber, to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight shows that we’re barely able to deal with the inept and mentally ill.
The most intelligent unclassified speculation to which I have access places al Qaeda at the head of the list of likely suspects looking for the means and opportunity to set off a nuke somewhere on US soil. Al Qaeda heads the list because they seem to have both the money and the credibility to pull off a nuclear attack against a US city. But there are others who could do it as well.
What’s particularly troubling today is that, since 9/11 there have been no significant terrorist attacks in the US. Why not? Using conventional explosives, terrorists have killed hundreds in Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, and France over the past decade, but we’ve been pretty much left alone
Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former C.I.A. official and Director of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the Department of Energy thinks al Qaeda is biding its time until it can pull off something to “top” the horror of 9/11. About the only thing that would horrify Americans more than the collapse of the Twin Towers would be the detonation of a nuclear weapon, even a small one, within our borders.
In Al Qaeda Weapons of Mass Destruction Threat: Hype or Reality? Mowatt-Larssen details the first 15 years of Al Qaeda’s two-decade-long effort to acquire a nuclear device. There is no question the bastards are working to buy, steal, or build a nuke. And there is little doubt that, once they have it, smuggling it into the US would be easy. Some wags have suggested just hiding it in a bale of marijuana.
If you have the time, download Mowatt-Larssen’s paper. It’s about 30 pages long and covers a range of WMD’s, including nukes. The paper was published in 2010. Curiously, Mowatt-Larssen’s chronology runs only from 1988 through 2003. Nonetheless is it a well-documented summary of al Qaeda’s first fifteen years in the WMD business.
We have no reason to believe that al Qaeda has ceased its quest for significant WMDs. In fact, the flow of al Qaeda leaders and foot soldiers into Pakistan leads me to believe that they view Pakistan as their best source for nuclear devices. Pakistan has munitions-grade nukes already stockpiled and has been the Third World’s principal source for nuclear design and technology information.
These are not pleasant times. More about the coming nuclear nightmare tomorrow. Sleep well.
This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 9:50 PM and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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The Coming Nuclear Attack on the US – I
An attempted terrorist attack on the United States in the next few years is “a certainty.”
Unfortunately, these three agree not only that an attack is a certainty but they also agree that the weapon most likely to be used is a nuclear bomb.
There has been ample speculation about why there have been no major terrorist attacks against the United States since 9/11. Some would like to believe that DHS, TSA, FBI, NSA, CIA, NRO, ATF, ICE and all the other three-letter agencies charged with preserving our safety are doing a crack-up job of stopping terrorism dead in its tracks.
Wiser heads don’t buy this improved enforcement theory for a second. Our borders are as porous as ever. The recent, almost comic, attempt of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Underwear Bomber, to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight shows that we’re barely able to deal with the inept and mentally ill.
The most intelligent unclassified speculation to which I have access places al Qaeda at the head of the list of likely suspects looking for the means and opportunity to set off a nuke somewhere on US soil. Al Qaeda heads the list because they seem to have both the money and the credibility to pull off a nuclear attack against a US city. But there are others who could do it as well.
What’s particularly troubling today is that, since 9/11 there have been no significant terrorist attacks in the US. Why not? Using conventional explosives, terrorists have killed hundreds in Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, and France over the past decade, but we’ve been pretty much left alone
Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former C.I.A. official and Director of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the Department of Energy thinks al Qaeda is biding its time until it can pull off something to “top” the horror of 9/11. About the only thing that would horrify Americans more than the collapse of the Twin Towers would be the detonation of a nuclear weapon, even a small one, within our borders.
In Al Qaeda Weapons of Mass Destruction Threat: Hype or Reality? Mowatt-Larssen details the first 15 years of Al Qaeda’s two-decade-long effort to acquire a nuclear device. There is no question the bastards are working to buy, steal, or build a nuke. And there is little doubt that, once they have it, smuggling it into the US would be easy. Some wags have suggested just hiding it in a bale of marijuana.
If you have the time, download Mowatt-Larssen’s paper. It’s about 30 pages long and covers a range of WMD’s, including nukes. The paper was published in 2010. Curiously, Mowatt-Larssen’s chronology runs only from 1988 through 2003. Nonetheless is it a well-documented summary of al Qaeda’s first fifteen years in the WMD business.
We have no reason to believe that al Qaeda has ceased its quest for significant WMDs. In fact, the flow of al Qaeda leaders and foot soldiers into Pakistan leads me to believe that they view Pakistan as their best source for nuclear devices. Pakistan has munitions-grade nukes already stockpiled and has been the Third World’s principal source for nuclear design and technology information.
These are not pleasant times. More about the coming nuclear nightmare tomorrow. Sleep well.
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This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 9:50 PM and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.