do you think they will do NY or destroy washington and all leaders inside?

Portents of A Nuclear Al-Qaeda


By David Ignatius
Thursday, October 18, 2007; A25

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen is paid to think about the unthinkable. As the Energy Department's director of intelligence, he's responsible for gathering information about the threat that a terrorist group will attack America with a nuclear weapon.
With his shock of white hair and piercing eyes, Mowatt-Larssen looks like a man who has seen a ghost. And when you listen to a version of the briefing he has been giving recently to President Bush and other top officials, you begin to understand why. He is convinced that al-Qaeda is trying to acquire a nuclear bomb that will leave the ultimate terrorist signature -- a mushroom cloud.
We've all had enough fear-mongering to last a lifetime. Indeed, we have become so frightened of terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001, that we have begun doing the terrorists' job for them by undermining the legal framework of our democracy. And truly, I wish I could dismiss Mowatt-Larssen's analysis as the work of an overwrought former CIA officer with too many years in the trenches.
But it's worth listening to his warnings -- not because they induce more numbing paralysis but because they might stir sensible people to take actions that could detect and stop an attack. That's why his boss, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, is encouraging him to speak out. Mowatt-Larssen doesn't want to anguish later that he didn't sound the alarm in time.
Mowatt-Larssen has been gathering this evidence since a few weeks after Sept. 11, when then-CIA Director George Tenet asked him to create a new branch on weapons of mass destruction in the agency's counterterrorism center. He helped Tenet prepare the chapter on al-Qaeda's nuclear efforts that appears in Tenet's memoir, " At the Center of the Storm." Now that the uproar over Tenet's mistaken "slam dunk" assessment of the Iraqi threat has died down, it's worth rereading this account. It provides a chilling, public record of al-Qaeda's nuclear ambitions.
Mowatt-Larssen argues that for nearly a decade before Sept. 11, al-Qaeda was seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. As early as 1993, Osama bin Laden offered $1.5 million to buy uranium for a nuclear device, according to testimony presented in federal court in February 2001. When the al-Qaeda leader was asked in 1998 if he had nuclear or chemical weapons, he responded: "Acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so."
Even as al-Qaeda was preparing to fly its airplane bombs into buildings, the group was also trying to acquire nuclear and biological capabilities. In August 2001, bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, met around a campfire with Pakistani scientists from a group called Umma Tameer-E-Nau to discuss how al-Qaeda could build a nuclear device. Al-Qaeda also had an aggressive anthrax program that was discovered in December 2001 after bin Laden was driven from his haven in Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda proclaimed a religious rationale to justify the WMD attacks it was planning. In June 2002, a Kuwaiti-born cleric named Suleiman Abu Ghaith posted a statement on the Internet saying that "al-Qaeda has the right to kill 4 million Americans" in retaliation for U.S. attacks against Muslims. And in May 2003, at the same time Saudi operatives of al-Qaeda were trying to buy three Russian nuclear bombs, a cleric named Nasir al-Fahd issued a fatwa titled "A Treatise on the Legal Status of Using Weapons of Mass Destruction Against Infidels." Interrogations of al-Qaeda operatives confirmed that the planning was serious. Al-Qaeda didn't yet have the materials for a WMD attack, but it wanted them.
Most chilling of all was Zawahiri's decision in March 2003 to cancel a cyanide attack in the New York subway system. He told the plotters to stand down because "we have something better in mind." What did that mean? More than four years later, we still don't know.
After 2004, the WMD trail went cold, according to Mowatt-Larssen. Many intelligence analysts have concluded that al-Qaeda doesn't have nuclear capability today. Mowatt-Larssen argues that a more honest answer is: We don't know.
So what to do about this spectral danger? The first requirement, says Mowatt-Larssen, is to try to visualize it. What would it take for al-Qaeda to build a bomb? How would it assemble the pieces? How would the United States and its allies deploy their intelligence assets so that they could detect a plot before it was carried out? How would we reinvent intelligence itself to avert this ultimate catastrophe?
A terrorist nuclear attack, as Tenet wrote in his book, would change history. If we can see how this story might end, perhaps we can deflect the arrow before it hits its target.
The writer is co-host ofPostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address isdavidignatius@washpost.com.

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"They must find it difficult...Those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than the truth as authority"

i find it very amusing to think of a few long bearded, fanatical islamic physicists tinkering with new detonator lens designs or brainstorming about whether tungsten or uranium tamper material would be better.

Mokbok-Jubla Mohadin says, "tungsten is lighter, it would be easier to carry around in a backpack if we use that." keenly retorting, Shubla Diskaheer Mohamed replies, "U 238 will provide a more than marginal yield increase, Bin Shaluklah is very athletic, he can deal with seven more pounds!"

lol

al qaeda nukes.

lol






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"But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race."

- Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, Hero to the servants of big government, Racist War Monger

it doesn't add up to me, since the whole terrorism thing began the usa has been hunting down al qaeda so if they get intelligence i would have thought they would just say hey guys he's in there go bomb them and then move on and keep looking. To say he's been gathering intelligence since the beginning is absurd otherwise we would have surely ended what was going on with mr bin laden

logic proves that Al-queda wants nukes.

so the only real question is.....will they succeed?

If they did succeed, will they take thier time and very precisly execute the attack?Will they take years to set everything in motion for such a historic attack? Training, coordinating & communicating. Even the ones involved will not know what they are really doing in thier mission.

I dont think it will be easy for us to find out.


What will be the American retaliation for the searing of 4 Million American Citizens? Indluding possibly important leaders.

If washington is destroyed who will be the one left alive to authorize our retaliatory Nuclear Stikes on parts of iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea
& Syria.

If they obtain the nuke as they are trying to do. if they succeed to sear an american city killing millions in one blow.

WWIII Begins

Statment from George W Bush from 2 days ago:

“We’ve got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel,” “So I’ve told people that, if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”


Iran Thursday shrugged off a warning by US President George W. Bush that its nuclear programme could lead to "World War III", saying his remarks only served to show Tehran's diplomatic success.

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"They must find it difficult...Those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than the truth as authority"

I'm hoping if they do get Nukes, they do Washington first, Ground zero, the White House.

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

I already know what your hoping for medi. I wouldnt type stuff like that but then again im an Arab, maybe they let you guys get away with it.

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"They must find it difficult...Those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than the truth as authority"

VIOLATION OF TERMS!

that's the race card, you're in the wrong forum to use that! this is no hold barred politics; if you think it you might as well say it.





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"But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race."

- Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, Hero to the servants of big government, Racist War Monger

al queda isn't bright enough to hit the correct targets. they'd strike some highly visible target in an attempt to strike terror into america. fucking wankers. that wont stop the assult on their land. it will only provoke a nuclear strike on them and wipe the region out. that's precisely what the ruling class wants!

they need to take out the ultra-rich bankers who run this country and much of the world. those guys are small targets each and located world-wide. there is no need for a nuclear weapon to accomplish peace in this world. just kill those who benifit from war.

There are 1.1 million people working in the defense industry in the US alone.

33% of the citizens of the UK depend on the defense industry

That seems like a lot of people to kill.

The 5 largest weapons dealers in the world are the 5 permanent members of the UN Security council. US UK Russia China France.

when I made the stament: "maybe they let you get away with saying things like that", i was talking about the US government. If an Arab starts typing stuff against the goverment they will be investigated more probably than a non Arab.

thats just a fact. and Im glad its a fact.

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"They must find it difficult...Those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than the truth as authority"