Al-Qaeda has nukes, says intel

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021028-9543907.htm ^ | 10/28/02

[Gemflint]

LONDON - Soon after September 11 last year, the notion that al Qaeda might have nuclear weapons was largely dismissed by intelligence professionals.

It is, however, *****a working assumption in security circles now that the terror group does have nuclear capabilities. Al Qaeda's secret nuclear stash is assumed to be somewhere in Afghanistan, although finding it is proving to be as hard as locating Osama bin Laden.

[1Old Pro]

What scares me is that the INS is dysfunctional and terrorists have no problem getting into this country.

Related: INS is the root cause of the flood of illegal immigrants in this country. Here's proof,

[Lil'freeper]

This could be achieved by using nuclear weapons to destroy the oil industry in the Middle East and trigger an unprecedented global economic meltdown,

Hah, go for it. We have other sources of oil and a civilization capable of innovation. We would be able to recover from a meltdown. The same cannot be said of an Islamic superstate.

[Timesink]

Well, at least if there ever IS a true nuclear device set off in the US, the people that die will at least have given their lives to insure that all radical Muslims on Earth will be hunted into extinction, both via government decree and citizen vigilante groups; and that the immigration problem in the US will be solved permanently and quickly; the public will end up rioting if Congress and the White House don't start immediate, hardcore crackdowns and massive deportations.

[Timesink]

The same cannot be said of an Islamic superstate.

I never thought I'd see "Islamic" and "superstate" in the same sentence. COWER IN FEAR BEFORE THE MIGHTY POWER OF LEBANON, IMPERIALIST RUNNING DOG!

[Mark Felton]

The Al Queda nuclear "stash" is in Pakistan, in military bunkers. Pakistan created The Taliban and shelters Al Queda. They promote radical militant Islam through the hundreds of schools.

[phasma proeliator]

Ping

[Focault's Pendulum]

I brings to mind a question I have had for a while.

What is the personell strength of N.E.S.T.?
Nuclear Emergency Search Team.

[sam_paine]

I suppose ole Binny's upset about the House of Saud stealing all the resources from the peeps and selling them out. Does anybody have the pix of the Prince's lush underwater lounge? That really helps feed the people...

[Grut]

COWER IN FEAR BEFORE THE MIGHTY POWER OF LEBANON, IMPERIALIST RUNNING DOG!

Can't cower and run at the same time. Should be LACKEY DOG; you can cower and lackey a treat.

[Sam Cree]

My opinion is that if they don't already have them, they, or someone similar, will, sooner or later.

We need to do what we can to prepare. I'd say this could include ending our dependence on that part of the world for energy. This would also have the lovely effect of depriving them of some of the oil money that they are using to fund terrorism.

[sam_paine]

I never thought I'd see "Islamic" and "superstate" in the same sentence.

I can see it now...post WW-III. The Lebanese superstate fields its first aerospace prize, the F-12345.

Stealthy due to its radar absorbing goat-skin surface, the glider is powered by the outflow boundary of nuclear detonations by the great Satan, thus recycling otherwise environment unfriendly wind. Armaments include 5 to 6 pounds of rocks which can be launched simultaneously from a wicker basket. Counter measures include sand in attacking pilot's eyes, and screams of sheer panic to incite empathy in enemy anti-aircraft emplacements.

[fourdeuce82d]

COWER IN FEAR BEFORE THE MIGHTY POWER OF LEBANON, IMPERIALIST RUNNING DOG! Can't cower and run at the same time. Should be LACKEY DOG; you can cower and lackey a treat.

Can I play? "Abase yourself before the celestial magnificence of Yemen, scrofulous pariah dog...."

[Illbay]

The fear is that we're not going to know this for sure until a bomb goes off somewhere in the continental U.S.

There are just too many holes in the dike.

[RayChuang88]

And the scary part is that Pakistan's nuclear weapons aren't the 1 kT improvised nuclear device terrorist bomb. They are more in the range of 10 to 20 kT, bombs that can literally flatten several square miles of city.

What really worries me is that bin Laden could have paid for the Pakistanis to build something truly frightening: a thermonuclear bomb. Imagine a bomb with a yield in the 150-200 kT range--something like that detonated at Times Square in NYC will just about flatten every building on Manhattan, severely damage the western part of the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn, and heavily damage cities on the New Jersey shoreline of the Hudson next to Manhattan. A death toll in the 1.5-2 million range is what will happen from such a device. (eek!)

[Illbay]

I don't agree. In the first place, the Democrats will look around for some way to turn this into their political advantage. And the "Peace at any cost" types will immediately begin chanting even louder that we brought it on ourselves, and we shouldn't have been willing to "shed blood for oil."

And entrenched bureaucracy will fight like h*ll to hold onto their jobs (remember: the Homeland Security legislation has been held up by the Dems in the Senate solely to protect government bureaucrats' sinecures).

IOW, I don't see how 9/11 really changed much, and I don't see how detonation of a "dirty bomb" or even a small nuke--which will probably result in devastation of about the same magnitude as the WTC--will change them either.

We allowed the Left to entrench itself in our most fundamental government functions over the last half-century, and we're all now paying the price for it.

[Thane_Banquo]

Rose Gottemoeller, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and assistant energy secretary for nonproliferation in the Clinton administration, said: "I believe that the chance that al Qaeda controls actual warheads is virtually nil. It is much more likely that they have acquired some nuclear materials, but here the range could be very wide: from depleted uranium or low-level radioactive sources [such as those used in smoke detectors], all the way up to weapons-usable material - highly enriched uranium or plutonium."

Didn't the Clinton people say the same thing about North Korea in 1994?

[Thane_Banquo]

"Mossad [Israeli intelligence] reported that bin Laden bought tactical nuclear weapons from some former Soviet republics," he said.

These Mossad guys are rarely wrong.

[Yasotay]

I have no idea .... but it sure seems that they are VERY busy with the Secret Service clearing out the President's travel, I thought it was NEST that found that ship in NY (actually NJ) harbor right before the President spoke on Ellis Island.

[SauronOfMordor]

Read The radioactive boy scout: when a teenager attempts to build a breeder reactor. (case of David Hahn who managed to secure materials and equipment from businesses and information from government officials to develop an atomic energy radiation project for his Boy Scout merit-badge) , (excerpt:)

I met with David in the hope of making sense not only of his experiments but of him. The archetypal American suburban boy learns how to hit a fadeaway jump shot, change a car's oil, perform some minor carpentry feats. If he's a Boy Scout he masters the art of starting a fire by rubbing two sticks together, and if he's a typical adolescent pyro, he transforms tennis-ball cans into cannons. David Hahn taught himself to build a neutron gun. He figured out a way to dupe officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission into providing him with crucial information he needed in his attempt to build a breeder reactor, and then he obtained and purified radioactive elements such as radium and thorium.

and then try to reassure yourself that al Queda couldn't do what a 15-year-old American boy did, but on a larger scale. U-238, given a neutron source and some time for it to work, could be transmuted into plutonium