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Posted on 12/01/2004 1:04:29 AM PST by eakole
"Yossef Bodansky, the former director of the U.S. Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and a man I respect immensely for his intelligence insights, says the United States faces an "inevitable" al-Qaida attack with weapons of mass destruction.
"What would be the U.S. response to such an attack?
"Now is the time to think about the unthinkable.
"Contingency plans need to be made. And those plans, at least some of them, need to be known to the whole world to serve as a deterrent against such an attack. …"
"… * The Islamist world and its allies need to know there will be an unprecedented nuclear response to any attack on the United States with weapons of mass destruction. We don't need to be specific about which major cities and installations will be vaporized. But it needs to be clear that the response will be overwhelming, resulting in far greater death and destruction than what is inflicted upon the United States. We need to let the terrorists know that addresses of response have been determined. Those counseling the terrorists that such an attack on the United States is justified should be among the first to experience the horror."
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
Everybody, eventually.
well now.......
hhhmmmm....
If the US says that Syria or Iran will be nuked then it provides incentive for small-time enemies of Syria or Iran to launch a WMD attack against the US (anthrax, sarin, ricin or radiological bomb, all fairly available to smaller countries...) and then provide clear evidenc it was Syria or Iran.
Otherwise how does the US know for sure the origins of a WMD attack. There is no missile trail.
Terrorism is a cancer that can only be cured with a massive dose of radiation.
What's this guy trying to say, Squantos? It's a bit of a mystery. Thanks in advance. :)
I vote for the Samson Option.
I much prefer FAE's to nukes, no radioactivity to worry about afterwards. You can go right in after the firestorms have abated. We already used them in DS and OEF, we will just have to use a few more at a time.
Here's a fun topic. / tongue in cheek
I think he's wishing more than speaking......I like the way he wishes . Short version IMO he's selling the threat as it should be ....to other countries. Not ours.
Stay safe !
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The MSM could only dream of such a scenario: Bush fails to protect the US, and them kills millions overseas in "cowboy-like" retaliation, blah, blah, blah. And the images would immediately shift from dead Americans to dead people overseas, "Bush started WWIII" protests in Europe, blah, blah, blah.
Started and ended...
You are applying rationality to a Joseph Farah screed. Cut that out!
We certainly have the addresses of the monsters who are giving approval to the terrorists. I hope we do.
This needs to be beyond the planning stages by now. Discussion yes. Resolve yes. Ready time, yesterday.
One problem to consider is the event that we elect a muslim, internationalist, milquetoast or "Benedict Arnold" President.
You pinged me to THIS as a fun topic/tongue in cheek?
Am I still sane or is my head hurting too much? LOL!
I want you to know, I read the whole article.
For once, I agree with JF.
We do need to tell the Islamic world that we'll nuke all of them
if we're attacked with WMD's.
Sounds like you've got somebody specific in mind...
We haven't even elected but one Catholic president, what are the odds that we'll elect a Muslim one anytime in the foreseeable future?
And this would be different from what we're hearing from Europe already how?
Guilty of aiding and abetting:
Saudi Arabia
Iran
Pakistan
Syria
Palestine
North Korea
Add Russia and China to that list.
More than one. Carter, the Clintons, and Kerry are good examples. BTW, considering this talk about the "Arnold Swartzennegger" amendment to the Constitution, I should include "foreign born" among the list of undesirable presidential characteristics.
Who is going to die?Everybody, eventually.
Muahaha! You foolish mortals...
Regarding: "We haven't even elected but one Catholic president, what are the odds that we'll elect a Muslim one anytime in the foreseeable future?"
Comment: Other than elections the Constitution provides for a presidential succession should the President and Vice President die or become unable to perform his duties. THAT person could be a Muslim.
Finally, someone besides me advocating pre-retaliation notification and massive use of nukes. It's about time. Maybe that'll persuade the muslim masses to *deter* the radicals and terrorists, internally. But if they're as collectively 6th century dumb as I suspect they are, it won't, sadly.
Way, way less than zero, IMO.
Not finding my name in this article was kind of a mixed blessing. I'm not ready to die, but I really don't want to go to work today.
Alright I'll start. I really don't think we can go wrong in any scenario by attacking France first.
Its nice to know that I'm not the only one who checks the obituaries every day to see if I have to go to work or not.
The rats in the holes who would do us massive harm again, need to be warned in a very public way...do it and your so called holy shrines will exist no more.....
That's what the neutron bomb was designed for. A small explosion accompanied with a massive wave of radiation that would kill off living beings in the vicinity, but would not leave any fallout. Decontamination of buildings could be accomplished with something as simple as a hosedown from a firetruck.
I can just imagine Osama's face when he hear's about Mecca's destruction.
:-)
I would sure like to see a few choice locations turn to green glass in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran just to name a few. However I do not believe we will ever again use a nuke against a civilian target. The response, only conventional weapons, would be measured to assure only those responsible were hit.
You mean Daisy cutters ? or OLD BLUE ?
Add France to that list, at the TOP of that list.
I don't know about you, but, if the USA were attacked by a WMD, then, PC correctness can take a hike, all bets are off, all gloves are off, I am sure the USA will retaliate in some kind of force this world has never seen.
Isn't that the extremists' goal -- one final showdown?
I agree with you that if attacked with a WMD we will respond in a hellish and very deadly way. Why not openly advertise this in an effort to "deter" that WMD attack upon America in the first place?
I am afraid that could be their motivation, but, our military planners will have to come up with some kind of plan as not to wipe out the rest of us. Regardless of WHOM , were to attack us ( even Russia ) we still have our subs as our ace in the whole. Thats why Russia, and China are not so trigger happy to attack us directly, maybe their game plan is to get us were it hurts ( economically, and geo politically ).
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Samson Option: Israel's Plan to Prevent Mass Destruction Attacks
David Eberhart
Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2001
With American bombing raids into Afghanistan and a tough President Bush intimating more of the same for other terrorist-harboring nations, experts and armchair war-watchers are inserting nuclear powerhouse Israel into the calculus of potential Armageddon in the Middle East.
Adding yet other variables, a defiant Saddam Hussein issued an ominous warning in late August, just weeks before the terror attacks on New York City and the Pentagon: "The battle [against the U.S.] continues on the economic, political and military fields. We are convinced we will be victorious."
All that the saber-rattling Iraqi dictator left out of this latest diatribe was a bold repeat of his 1991 pre-Desert Storm boast that if America attacked, the first to feel his wrath in the "mother of all battles" would be Israel.
After decades of living among hostile neighbors, Israel has yet to be attacked by an enemy using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. One reason may be the horrific plan some claim Israel drew up to prevent such an attack. The plan was called the Samson Option. An astute investigative journalist and student of history chalked a dramatic potential solution to the volatile equation on the blackboard - a decade ago.
"Should war break out in the Middle East again and should the Syrians and the Egyptians break through again as they did in 1973 [Yom Kippur War], or should any Arab nation fire missiles again at Israel, as Iraq did [in the 1991 Gulf War], a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong possibility."
Pulitzer Prize-winning author ("My Lai 4") Seymour M. Hersh made this hypothesis in his 1991 best seller "The Samson Option."
Captured and cruelly maimed, the book’s biblical namesake uttered the ultimate fighting words, "Let my soul die with the Philistines."
That said, the divinely empowered Samson pushed apart the temple pillars - collapsing the roof and killing himself as well as his enemies.
In his exposé of Israel’s clandestine nuclear arsenal, Hersh suggested that in the early days (late 1960s) of crude big-flash-and-bang nukes, one defensive option to counter an attack on Israel with weapons of mass destruction was for the beleaguered nation to mimic Samson and grimly trade holocaust for holocaust.
Hersh's 1991 prognostication of a "strong possibility" of the use by Israel of nuclear weapons rested on his knowledge that by the mid-1980s, Israeli technicians at the super-secret Dimona nuclear plant had produced hundreds of low-yield neutron warheads capable of destroying large numbers of enemy troops with minimal property damage.
Israel's ability to use nukes tactically and surgically, however, has evolved a great deal since the Samson option was still realistically an option.
Israel's Military Might
In 1997, Jane's Intelligence Weekly examined satellite photographs of what it described as an Israeli military base at Kfar Zechariah, concluding academically, "Israel's nuclear arsenal is larger than many estimates."
According to Jane's, the site was said to house about 50 Jericho-2 missiles, believed to have a maximum range of about 3,000 miles with a warhead of about 2,200 pounds.
According to the report, the installation contained nuclear bombs, configured for dropping from bombers.
Furthermore, five bunkers at the site were cited as capable of safeguarding 150 weapons.
"This … supports indications that the Israeli arsenal may contain as many as 400 nuclear weapons with a total combined yield of 50 megatons," the report concluded.
In 1998 the New York Times reported a Rand Corp. study commissioned by the Pentagon that opined Israel had enough plutonium to make 70 nuclear weapons.
More light was shed on the issue in February of last year when the Israeli Knesset (parliament) held the first public discussion on the country’s nuclear arms program.
Issam Mahoul, an Arab Israeli MP and member of the Hadash (Communist) Party, petitioned that country’s Supreme Court to force the government to permit a parliamentary debate on the forbidden subject.
The upshot of this bold and generally unpopular tactic was an unprecedented televised session of the Knesset at which Mahoul stated that, according to experts' estimates, Israel had stockpiled huge numbers of nuclear warheads.
This had increased to what he described as the "insane amount of 200-300." The weapons had been developed with the help of the South African apartheid regime.
Working up a head of rhetorical steam, Mahoul grandly alleged that three new German-built submarines just purchased by Israel were to be fitted with nuclear weapons.
Their stated purpose, he said, was "to cruise deep in the sea and constitute a second strike force in the event that Israel is attacked with nuclear weapons."
Mahoul also announced what was hardly a news bulletin - Israel was producing "biological warfare" weapons at the government's Biological Institute in Ness Ziona.
The obstreperous MP concluded that the government's official policy of "nuclear ambiguity" was the height of self-delusion. "All the world knows that Israel is a vast warehouse of atomic, biological and chemical weapons that serves as an anchor for the Middle East arms race," he said.
Despite the bristling inventory of nukes, the Israelis have a laudable history of restraint in brandishing, much less using, these most destructive of all weapons of mass destruction.
In fact, for most of the latter half of the 20th century, the Israeli Bomb remained invisible and unacknowledged. Israel's official position was to neither confirm nor deny its nuclear status, only pledging on the record "not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East."
A Show of Restraint
According to Hersh, the best example of Israeli restraint in the face of great provocation came during the Gulf War.
On the second day of the American invasion, Saddam Hussein fired eight Scud missiles at noncombatant Israel. Two of the conventionally armed missiles landed on Tel Aviv. Then Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir responded by ordering mobile missile launchers armed with nuclear weapons moved into the open and deployed facing Iraq.
The Samsonesque strongman of the Middle East had stirred - and the world held its breath.
Promising Patriot missile batteries and loads of future aid, the United States pressured Israel to keep cool. After all, the allied coalition included a number of Arab nations, and the U.S. feared that dramatic Israeli retaliation could fragment the fragile alliance.
By the end of the Gulf War, Israel had dutifully absorbed 26 Scuds - none armed with biological or chemical weapons.
And therein lies the rub. What if the missiles had featured biochemical agent warheads?
Israel's prime ministers have plenary jurisdiction over their country's nuclear activities.
The refrain used consistently by the Israeli leaders has been and remains an unqualified: "Israel reserves the right to retaliate if attacked."
Traditionally, Israeli leaders have pigeonholed nuclear weapons as a psychological insurance policy for unthinkable contingencies, under the heading of "last resort."
The hope of those in the inner sanctums of national security is that the exigencies of America's New War send no such unthinkable contingencies in the direction of America’s quiet ally.
but what if China wants us to nuke the Muslims? it goes around and around
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Excellent. The engineering solution to this problem begins to creep in around the edges of the mainstream. Yes, we need to have this discussion.