Posted on 05/09/2007 7:39:00 AM PDT by NGC 6822
WASHINGTON: Every week, a group of experts from agencies around the U.S. government - including the CIA, the Pentagon, the FBI and the Energy Department - meets to assess Washington's progress toward solving a grim problem: If a terrorist set off a nuclear bomb in an American city, could the United States determine who detonated it and who provided the nuclear material?
So far, the answer is maybe.
That uncertainty lies at the center of a vigorous, but carefully cloaked debate within the Bush administration. It focuses on how to refashion the U.S. approach to nuclear deterrence in an attempt to counter the threat posed by terrorists who could obtain bomb-grade uranium or plutonium to make and deliver a weapon.
A previously undisclosed meeting last year of President George W. Bush's most senior national security advisers was the highest level discussion so far about how to rewrite the Cold War rules. .............................................
Bush was able to issue a credible warning, other senior officials said, in part because the International Atomic Energy Agency has a library of nuclear samples from North Korea, obtained before the agency's inspectors were thrown out of the country, that would probably make it possible to trace an explosion back to North Korea's nuclear arsenal.
The North Koreans are fully aware, government experts believe, that the United States has access to that database of nuclear DNA.
But when it comes to other countries, the database may be very limited. And in interviews over the past several weeks, senior U.S. nuclear experts have said that that gap is one reason that the Bush administration is so far unable to make a convincing threat to terrorists or their suppliers that they will be found out.
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
I wrote an article last year in FreeRepublic that pointed out the real danger is from a clandestine, rogue state threat--not by missile. This is the first article that I have seen that publicly admits to that scenario. See: "What Threat Does Iran Pose?" http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1686684/posts
How long before you get in trouble for posting a “how to” guide for the enemy? Not meant for flames, just asking.
Operation Wildfire
I hope he US has a list of targets for US nuclear ICBMs to punish the perpetrators and those who gave them nuclear technology. Mecca should be high on that list.
For anyone who hasn’t read Wretchard’s “Three Conjectures” essay at the Belmont Club, it should be required reading.
Check it out here: http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2003/09/three-conjectures-pew-poll-finds-40-of.html
It talks about the likelyhood and possible consequences of terrorists obtaining nukes.
“I hope he US has a list of targets for US nuclear ICBMs to punish the perpetrators and those who gave them nuclear technology. Mecca should be high on that list.”
All roads lead to China and Russia. Below them, Iran & North Korea then Al Queda and jihadi’s. They will suceed in vaporizing NYC and sometime in the next few short years. When that occurs, it will take us a decade to recover if ever. I give Bush credit where it is due for making this priority number one despite the unpopular tactics to keep us safe. I also think someday history will remember Bush more favorably, despite the rats trying to blame the galaxies problems on him.
Store all fissile materials in pig fat.
I believe that what I write is not a revelation to the enemy; they already know it. Someone recently expressed a philosophy which I will paraphrase: "The most dangerous enemy in the world is NOT the terrorist. The most dangerous enemy is the honest, hardworking, well intentioned person that either doesn't have the time or the interest to understand the nature of the real threats that we face." Fortunately, the readers of this site don’t fall into that category.
And, more specific to your question, no one has knocked on my door yet.
“higher level diplomatic thinking”
Heh. That’s my kind of diplomacy — mushroom clouds followed by intermittent sunbreaks, light winds, and fallout.
So quick to forget that the U.S. sold these technologies to other countries?
Oh, boy! IBTZ?
Wow.....you are something else. You are Factually Incorrect.
.
Is your name Jimmy Carter?
For example:
1. What would we do if the government of Pakistan was suddenly overturned and fell under the influence of radicals?
2. What if other states in the Middle East became frightened of Iran and started their own nuclear programs, thus raising the possibility of an accidental nuclear war in that region? (I have seen several articles suggesting that this process is imminent.)
3. What if an alliance was formed between Iran and Russia, or Iran and China, both of which hold veto power on the UN Security Council? Would we make another so-called “illegal, preemptive war” to stop Iran from developing “imagined” nuclear weapons. (I use the quotations in reference to world opinion, not my own.)
4. What if Somalia and the Sudan became totally radicalized (as if they weren’t already), and the first nuclear device, perhaps a dirty bomb, went off-not in America, but rather in Nairobi, Kenya? What would the West do about that? What country was the supplier to which terrorist group?
My point is that this whole business looks more and more unstable and unmanageable to me, and this article that I posted confirms that many are struggling with these scenarios.
Good read, if a little leftist.
We should tell every Arab country that if a nuke goes off here that before we even start asking questions we will destroy every Muslim capital including the capitals of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan and non muslim North Korea.
Let them police themselves.
John
Bush will be considered by future historians as a great president.
John
Another disaster compliments of the Clinton Legacy!
If they survive.
In the Forward he suggested that if Wildfire didn’t exist, it should be implemented. That’s not leftist. The book was anti-right-wing-nut-job. I’m okay with that.
“So quick to forget that the U.S. sold these technologies to other countries?”
What nuclear technologies did we sell to Iran or North Korea?
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