Posted on 07/11/2014 6:30:16 AM PDT by Innovative
Extreme Islamist group ISIS have seized 90lb (40kg) of radioactive uranium in Iraq which could be used to make a dirty bomb. The Times reports that the militants seized the material after overrunning a university in the city of Mosul, which they captured last month.
Iraq's ambassador to the UN has now appealed to the international community for help to "stave off the threat of their use by terrorists in Iraq and abroad."
This is believed to be the first time that an Islamist terror group has been able to obtain such a large quantity of radioactive material, and security analysts now fear they could use it in so-called "dirty bombs" – conventional bombs loaded with radioactive substances.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
“...I’ll see you in New York...!”
Unless the American people demand (forcefully enough that Congress complies) the POTUS be stripped of his powers while being impeached for treason and/or sedition.
Or if that wouldn’t work, if Biden and half of Obama’s cabinet twice say Obama is incapable of performing the duties of the office, and 2/3 of each chamber of Congress agrees...
No matter how you slice it, we need a BUNCH of Americans to wake the heck up - and realize that having a foreign enemy combatant as POTUS is very dangerous for everybody. This guy has armed, trained, funded, provided access, and made excuses for this country’s enemies - from the time he joined The New Party with the expressed purpose of destroying this country from within. Means, motive, opportunity - the guy has them all, and whoever doesn’t take that seriously is basically an accomplice to the murder of those of us who DO take it seriously. If they die from stupidity it’s suicide, but if their stupidity causes the rest of us to die it’s the moral equivalent of murder.
And that’s blood you don’t want to have on your hands when you meet your Maker.
Look for the ragheads that glow in the dark.
If one handles it for a while one can get thyroid cancer latter. I know from personal experience having played with uranium ore as a child, and got thyroid cancer at age 45 as a result.
I’m going to go one step further and say first we’re going to get the illegals marching/rioting in the streets.
Governors will be forced to call out national guard to stop the violence.
Then there are going to be terrorist attacks and people will connect the terrorist attacks to the illegals teaming up with the terrorist.
The rioting and terrorist attacks will be declared an act of war.
Since it is an act of war, Obama will take control of the national guard troops to stop the violence.
Then our little lefty friends are going to get one or more of their judges to declare all the illegals being kept in detention centers all over the country must be released.
Then people will turn to Obama to be their savior and completely suspend the constitution to stop the foreign army of illegals from being released on the streets and keep us safe.
Obama will become a dictator, not because he planned it or wanted to, but because the people demanded it.
The left always has to present themselves as a savior when they become a dictator.
I’m just going to add a little to what I said about someone’s stupidity getting other people killed, and the guilt involved with that.
In the Old Testament God said that when He gives a warning for a prophet to give to Israel, and the prophet refuses to speak that warning, when the nation dies the bloodguilt will be on the one who failed to issue the warning.
If the warning is issued and the people refuse to heed it, the bloodguilt is on them.
Who knew what and when is CRITICAL in God’s rendering of judgment.
Those who know the danger and fail to either give the warning or to act on that warning are guilty of the deaths that result.
Congress and media, you’re not going to live forever. You WILL meet your Maker someday. And He is not bribed or corrupted. He knows the truth. There is forgiveness but ONLY WHERE THERE IS REPENTANCE, and as John the Baptist said to the people of Jesus’ day, you must BEAR FRUIT BEFITTING REPENTANCE. If you are repentant you’re not going to sit cowering in your office thinking that your own success or life is all that matters. That very action is evidence that you have NOT repented, that you have not grieved at all over the lives you have put at risk.
Time for people to get real and know they will one day face REAL justice, not the mealy-mouthed, corrupt garbage that calls itself “justice” here.
No. An EMP is a result of a nuclear explosion. There is no nucelar explosion in a dirty bomb, only a chemical explosion.
If they hit liberals.....would I be THAT upset? I have to think about that.
Some education is in order (not really just for you personally, but for the public in general). You don’t need to enrich radioactive material to make a dirty bomb. You need to enrich it to make a nuclear weapon. A dirty bomb is just a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material. The idea is to use the conventional explosion to spread the radioactive material over a wide area.
Now, not to minimize the actual danger, but a dirty bomb is really in actual physical terms no more dangerous than a conventional explosive. The amount of radioactivity that would be released in a dirty bomb is minimal. You probably get more radiation from a typical dental x-ray than you would if you lived near a city where a dirty bomb was detonated.
The real danger of a dirty bomb (beyond of course the loss of life and property damage caused by the conventional explosion) is the psychological terror and panic it would create. Education is the way to combat this. Most people hear “radioactivity” and think of radiation poisoning, cancer, etc. The truth is that there is a natural level of radioactivity that we are all exposed to every day. In addition to this, various medical procedures, scanners at airports, and other sources add to this natural level. A dirty bomb would necessarily use low-level radioactive material. A terrorist group with access to more dangerous material would undoubtedly use such material to make a nuclear explosive, which would obviously be much more dangerous.
Far more seriously, ISIS took over a military base in northern Iraq last month that contains Saddam Hussein’s stockpile of chemical weapons, including hundreds of warheads containing sarin and mustard gas.That's quite concerning, and of course also runs directly against the "there were no WMDs in Iraq" nonsense. I've never understood why GWB didn't counter those claims forcefully...
Thanks for the clarification. I thought that was the case.
So the real worth of a dirty bomb is the hysteria it would cause.
Absolutely, although I don’t want to minimize the danger of a high-yield conventional explosive being detonated in a crowded urban area. That’s why we need to educate people and why the high level of scientific illiteracy in this country is a real danger.
How do you know it’s unenriched? Medical uranium may not have the purity of the atom bomb, but it is still radioactive. Nobody is talking about an atom-bomb of the level of Hiroshima, but that doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.
The point of a dirty bomb is that they use explosives to disperse radioactive material.
Sure, let’s not worry and do nothing about the terrorists, after all, “they couldn’t do that much damage”, right?
So a few thousand people die immediately and several thousand may get cancer as a result, later, but that’s no reason to actually try to prevent a terrorist attack. Let’s just sit here “being smart” and wait for it to happen...
“One example is the radiological accident occurring in Goiânia, Brazil, between September 1987 and March 1988: Two metal scavengers broke into an abandoned radiotherapy clinic and removed a teletherapy source capsule containing powdered caesium-137 with an activity of 50 T Bq. They brought it back to the home of one of the men to take it apart and sell as scrap metal. Later that day both men were showing acute signs of radiation illness with vomiting and one of the men had a swollen hand and diarrhea. A few days later one of the men punctured the 1 mm thick window of the capsule, allowing the caesium chloride powder to leak out and when realizing the powder glowed blue in the dark, brought it back home to his family and friends to show it off. After 2 weeks of spread by contact contamination causing an increasing number of adverse health effects, the correct diagnosis of acute radiation sickness was made at a hospital and proper precautions could be put into procedure. By this time 249 people were contaminated, 151 exhibited both external and internal contamination of which 20 people were seriously ill and 5 people died.[11]”
From Wikipedia, which is also trying to set people’s mind at ease — what’s a dirty bomb explosion among friends in a big city...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_bomb
Yes - thanks for the clarifications. ISIS can wreak havoc with dirty bombs that disrupt and cause panic.
Only if it is irradiated in a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator to produce radioactive fission products, or mixed with some highly radioactive materials. In fact, "low grade (uranium) material" possibly could be describing ore (rocks from the ground) containing < 0.10% natural uranium.
This story is being hyped (or spin-doctored) way out of proportion. Why?
Deadly? No. A minor health hazard? Yes. Need to be cleaned up? Yes.
Nice strawman. I never said that we should not stop terrorists from detonating such a dirty bomb; obviously we should take any and all possible measures to stop such an occurrence. The point I was making is that the main factor that makes a dirty bomb more dangerous than a conventional one is our own ignorance and scientific illiteracy. Your example just goes to prove my point. People hear the word “radioactivity” and react the same way to it, whether it’s 90 kg of naturally occuring uranium (which is relatively benign) or cesium 137, which would be highly dangerous.
A dirty bomb detonation in a crowded urban area would be a big deal. There would be thousands killed, but the same could be said for a conventional explosion in such a location. The dirty bomb is made worse by those who don’t understand that the most potent weapon of the terrorists who detonate it is our own fear and panic.
Except that what they use in HOSPITALS is not UNENRICHED URANIUM.
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