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

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

[AFPhys]

The WSJ is completely accurate about that.

[SirLinksalot]

The WSJ is completely accurate about that.

Yes, I think so too.

Here is the key passage to the very long article :

--------------------------------------------

So could al Qaeda make its own bomb? It appears that the terror network has tried and failed.

In August 2001, bin Laden was envisioning attacks bigger than what happened on September 11. Almost a month before the attacks on New York and Washington, bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri met with Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majeed, two officials once part of Pakistan's nuclear program. Mr. Mahmood had supervised the plant that enriched uranium for Pakistan's first bomb and later managed efforts to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Both scientists were arrested on Oct. 23, 2001. They remain under house arrest in Pakistan. At their meeting with bin Laden, they discussed plans to mine uranium from plentiful deposits in Afghanistan and talked about the technology needed to turn the uranium into bomb fuel. It was these scientists who informed bin Laden that the uranium from Uzbekistan was too impure to be useful for bomb making.

Al Qaeda will keep trying, no doubt. But there is no evidence that they are near succeeding. A wide array of documents and computer hard drives found in al Qaeda safe houses reveals a serious effort to build weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. military also obtained a document with the sinister title of "Superbomb."

In addition, CNN discovered a cache of documents at an al Qaeda safe house that outlined the terror network's WMD plans. David Albright, a physicist and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, was retained by CNN to evaluate the al Qaeda documents.

In "Al Qaeda's Nuclear Program: Through the Window of Seized Documents," a research paper for a think tank linked to the University of California at Berkeley, Albright concluded: "Whatever al Qaeda had accomplished towards nuclear weapon capabilities, its effort in Afghanistan was 'nipped in the bud' with the fall of the Taliban government. The international community is fortunate that the war in Afghanistan set back al Qaeda's effort to obtain nuclear weapons."

For now, suitcase-sized nuclear bombs remain in the realm of James Bond movies. Given the limitations of physics and engineering, no nation seems to have invested the time and money to make them. Both U.S. and the USSR built nuclear mines (as well as artillery shells), which were small but hardly portable--and all were dismantled by treaty by 2000. Alexander Lebed's claims and those of defector Stanislev Lunev were not based on direct observation. The one U.S. official who saw a small nuclear device said it was the size of three footlockers--hardly a suitcase. The desire to obliterate cities is portable--inside the heads of believers--while, thankfully, the nuclear devices to bring that about are not.

Mr. Miniter is author of "Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror" (Regnery, 2005), from which this article is excerpted. It is available from the OpinionJournal bookstore.

[Pharmboy]

You are vile.

[doc maverick]

I agree. After flying jets into 3 buildings, I don't put anything past these bastards.

[MRadtke]

I don't recall any "Warning" before 9-11.

[Eastbound]

Correction, Re: # 51: 'many of' should be 'many MORE of.'

[capitalist229]

Bin Ladin's thinking is on a larger scale.

He wants to stir up the pot globally, not just in America.

Initiate the clash of civlizations.

How does he do that ?

By provoking us into a disproportionate response.

Like unleashing ICBMs on major Islamic centers.

At which point it will be a war fought with pitchforks , not nukes.

In countless communities across the globe, Christians and Muslims, apocalyptic Biblical conflict.

BUMP

[gotribe]

I guess I could tolerate the military in charge of America for 6 months or so just to flush out the muzzie sewers inside and around the world. Although it might be hard to sleep while C-130s blast muzlim strongholds.

[gotribe]

Knowing what you know, why are you keeping our wife and children in war zones?

[DogBarkTree]

If any American thinks it cant or probably wont happen they need to wake up. If any IslamoRat thinks they will get away with it they are also wrong. If/when it happens I hope they lose 5 cities for every one city we lose.

[crusadersoldier]

[lentulusgracchus]

If there was such a thing as suitcase nukes, Al Qaida would have already used them.

You can't bet your life (and a lot of others) on that proposition.

The article you quoted by Richard Miniter (which I hadn't seen before) is a good article, but it essentially, in several points, argues from absence of evidence: but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. He is trying to prove a negative, for which the best argument, that Al-Q'aeda is not able to produce a nuclear weapon, would be to produce Osama Bin Laden's and Ayman Al-Zawahri's heads on pikes.

Miniter assumes a certain liability or burden, in writing his article, of being right. He is, after all, inviting the public to rely on the truth of his article; and if he turns out to have been disastrously wrong, people can reasonably say that, like the people in WTC Tower 2 who went back to their offices after the PA announcment of the "all clear", they predicated actions affecting their own safety on his statement.

[exnavy]

That's the correct approach to win a war.

[lentulusgracchus]

There was a prediction some years back that a leader in a light blue hat/beret/helmet .....

You're referring to Nostradamus's "man in a blue turban". There was a TV show about it once, 10 years ago or so, hosted by Charlton Heston. Supposedly the man was the "third great tyrant" foreseen by Nostradamus.

The problem with all those Nostradamus predictions is that his quatrains were deliberately obscurantist, and one can tease almost any meaning out of them.

[lentulusgracchus]

I purport that Usama & Company will try to discredit the Bush Administration which will result in a Democrat sweep in November. Look for something to happen in Iraq.

Not a bad guess. That would certainly be a sore point for the Administration, and therefore a leverage point for the bad guys.

[Uncle Meat]

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

To give you a chance to convert to Islam,which will somehow make it able for you to walk away from a nuclear blast and immune to radiation whenever this 12th Imam dude ever gets around to crawling out of his well.

[Jhensy]

Knowing what you know, why are you keeping our wife and children in war zones?

Another genius.

[Uncle Meat]

Bin Ladin's thinking is on a larger scale. He wants to stir up the pot globally, not just in America.

Bin Laden?!!!Isn't he suppose to be dead?Don't tell me he's been resurrected again.For someone who's so sickly,He's pretty tough.It has to be hell trudging around the mountains hooked up to a kidney machine.

[bboop]

So, if this happens, THEN can we call Muslims evil and ask them to please leave?

[Star Traveler]

You said -- "Osama going to update his current status to 'not dead'?!"

Well, President Bush has already done that for him, when he announced to the American public, recently, that the hunt for Osama is still on and that America is going to capture him sooner or later. And in addition to that, the FBI still has him on its 10-most-wanted men list.

Regards,
Star Traveler