Osama Bin Laden About to Attack the U.S., Says Terrorism Expert [suitcase nukes]

US Newswire ^ | 9/22/2006 | Dr. Hugh Cort

[Eagles Talon IV]

And the reason for the raghead slime warning us in advance is.......?

[gusopol3]

kasich talked with the journalist Mir on the telephone last night during Heartland. The subject was the Bin Laden death rumor; this wasn't mentioned.

[EBH]

it is required by their religion

[Valin]

Dr. Hugh Cort

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22%20Dr.%20Hugh%20Cort%3A%22&sa=N&tab=dw


He is evidently yet one more terrorism expert. It's getting to the point that you can't swing a dead cat without hitting one.

[x_plus_one]

NY and DC also have Americans living in them

Flyover country looks better all the time.

[gusopol3]

Savage had Williams on for multiple segments Monday night. There is a thread.

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

Don't trust anything from the left and their jihadist friends.

[EBH]

Naw...the left would say Bush did it. Conspiracy and all, like he did 9'11 to be able to start war in the ME...these would give reason to being able to go into Iran & Pakistan.

[AmericanInTokyo]

So what is it? By now, the DHS knows the movements of people in and out of the country by air, in computers. Is there or is there NOT a massive movement of muslims out of the US in the last few weeks?

If so, we would have had an alert level raised.

If not, then this is all just a bunch of hooey.

[beckysueb]

I don't see how Osama could do himself much good, striking at a city center full of Democrats.

I don't think they really care. Republicans, Democrats, their all infidels in their eyes. If they hit, I think they just want to do the most damage they can. Washington DC, New York, LA, Chicago.

[Eastbound]

This muzzie thing looks like it isn't going to end soon, so I think the best, quickest, and most effective way to rid the country of these crackpots who continually threaten our peace and security is to bannish them from America.

Therefore, We the people of the United States in order to insure domestic tranquility hereby authorize the federal government to engage in jihad against all Islamics here and issue them a thirty-day notice of eviction from our shores, dis-allowing them any future emigration or visitation.

We've tolerated this fatal-to-humanity retrograde belief system for far too long, and further tolerance will only hasten the demise not only of many of our Citizens, but of our Republic itself.

[madconserv]

Iran supports terrorists, Iran enriches uranium, but thats ok, fart around with the UN and waste more time.

[SirLinksalot]

http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,Hayden_072204,00.html

While much has been in the news about a "dirty bomb" - radiological materials wrapped in large amounts of TNT or C-4 like materials - the facts are that a dirty bomb would do more psychological harm than any kind of physical damage.

Small dirty bombs can be made by anyone with access to radiological materials, like spent nuclear fuel rods, hospital radiological materials, research isotopes, etc.

However, a dirty bomb would be a little difficult to build without contamination to the amateur that might be so foolish to do so. A suitcase bomb would be shielded and more easily transportable.

[roaddog727]

Detonating nukes in the US would truly be a fatal error on Osama's part.

I can't thing of anyting else that would more solidify a common response from the US population than that.

[Jhensy]

I hate to say it but NY and DC are sort of a win/win for us. The folks AQ will kill mostly support them or at least want to "understand why they hate us" and the next election cycle will produce a US govt. that will crush radical muslims.

It's all good, isn't it? Glad that my wife and children are your collateral.

Your post is unspeakable, and an apology is in order.

[finnigan2]

Strictly tin foil hat stuff but, if this is what it takes to remind the population of the consequences of the Democrats "surrender at any cost" message in the November elections, I'll take it.

[Tennessean4Bush]

Oh, and did we mention, we are having a special this week on potassium iodide tablets - 10% off.

Give me a break.

[SirLinksalot]

MORE ON SUITCASE NUKES...LET's EDUCATE OURSELVES ON ITS POTENCY...

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/050624.html

---

Dear Cecil:

I've heard talk about "suitcase" nuclear weapons, which someone could carry around and detonate anywhere. Is this possible? I'm not talking about whether someone could get hold of the proper components or be mad enough to pull it off. Rather, I always thought uranium and plutonium were really heavy and the amount needed for a bomb would be too much for one person to tote around. Gold, for example, is much heavier than most people think, certainly heavier than movies typically suggest, and plutonium has a much greater atomic weight and thus should be even heavier. In the end a suitcase-sized nuclear device in the back of a truck is just as awful as a totable one, but the image put forth in the media seems highly inaccurate to me. --Jonathan, via e-mail

---

Cecil replies:

As so often, we need to define our terms. If you're asking whether it's possible to make a practical nuclear bomb small and light enough to carry around one-handed in a Teletubbies lunch box, the answer is probably not. However, if we expand the menu of mininuke delivery systems to include, say, a bowling-ball bag or, better yet, a garden-variety wheeled suitcase, I wouldn't rule anything out. And if we conjure up what in my opinion is an entirely plausible scenario with a guy in a parking meter service uniform pulling an ashcan-sized two-wheeled coin vault through busy downtown streets at rush hour--well, I'll make the usual disclaimer about the proper components not being easy to come by, etc. Strictly from the standpoint of design feasibility, though, piece of cake.

While the active ingredients in a nuclear bomb are plenty heavy, they're not in the neutron-star range, as you seem to think. Gold, uranium, and plutonium all weigh around 19 to 20 grams per cubic centimeter (10 to 11 ounces per cubic inch), compared to about 8 g/cc for iron. It doesn't take much fissile material to make a bomb--on the order of 10 kilograms of plutonium, a roughly grapefruit-sized sphere. You'll also want a "shaped charge" of conventional explosives to compress the plutonium to critical mass, plus a few other precisely engineered but not especially bulky items. (A gun-type weapon that smashes two hunks of uranium together to trigger the nuclear blast is simpler to make but requires more material.) One thing you won't need is massive lead shielding to ensure the delivery person lives long enough to reach ground zero--prior to detonation, plutonium and uranium don't emit significant amounts of ionizing radiation, one reason a suitcase nuke wouldn't be easy to detect. What would the thing weigh, all told? Possibly as little as 30 kilograms, or 66 pounds. It'd be a bit unwieldy to slide under the seat as a carry-on, maybe, but still pretty small.

Guesswork, you say. True, but fairly educated guesswork. Our most recent glimpse at the state of the art in portable A-bomb design was furnished by the late Russian general Alexander Lebed, who in 1997 claimed that 100 or so Russian tactical nuclear bombinos couldn't be accounted for. Lebed said each device measured about 60 by 40 by 20 centimeters (24 by 16 by 8 inches, suitcase-sized in my book) and would explode with a force roughly equal to 1,000 tons of TNT--supposedly they were to be deployed by special forces behind enemy lines. Kremlin spokesmen roundly denied all, including the little bombs' existence. The question remains unsettled (and unsettling), but there seems small doubt that suitcase nukes are buildable, since plenty of portable if not exactly Samsonite-sized A-weapons were in fact built during the cold war. One oft-cited example is a U.S. device called the special atomic demolition munition (SADM), reportedly deployed in various configurations during the 1960s. The SADM, or anyway some SADMs, supposedly had a shipping weight of about 160 pounds, which is more like a dishwasher than a suitcase, but when assembled and ready for use may have been in the 50-to-60-pound range. In declassified photos one version looks to be about the size of a small shop vac--and remember, that's 40-year-old technology. Imagine what some nuclear nerd could come up with today.

Not to worry, the experts say: The suitcase nuke threat is exaggerated--if any were actually out there, given the global surplus of fanatics, by now they'd surely have been used. Producing weapons-grade uranium and plutonium is a huge industrial operation requiring skills and equipment not easily concealed; even the craziest terrorist knows there are easier ways to make things go boom. Despite what alarmists would have you believe, you can't just buy ten kilos of P-239 on the Tashkent black market and get a recipe from alt.nukes.made.simple. To which the pessimist, knowing that we're inevitably headed toward a more nuke-dependent world as other energy sources dry up, can only reply: Not yet.

--CECIL ADAMS

[exnavy]

Never underestimate your enemy.

[SirLinksalot]

THE MYTH OF THE SUITCASE NUKE ( FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007478