Surprisingly, a lot of people have already forgotten about the reports of radioactive canisters that were found empty up in the mountains in northern Afghanistan in that bunker that was discovered to be bin Laden's at one time.
I never heard about them in the first place. What did they contain; radioactive material?
I'm not nearly as bothered by the prospect of a dirty bomb as I am by the prospect of a nuclear weapons attack.
One would kill hundreds and the other would kill tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006 8:09:00 pm
Anonymous said...
Ramadan starts this year around the 24th of September and runs for a month. So that's not a precise date but a 30-day window. I'd been worried about November 22 which is another Muslim holiday I think -- Mo's birthday or deathday or something. What concerned me there is that the Iranian elections are going to be held in October and are, of course, rigged, plus our mid-term elections are in November. But that's Iran. Is OBL planning to get the jump on his rival jihadists? An argument could be made for Ramadan not being a great date for an attack like this because it would "tip off" the American public before the elections. But there are plenty of reasons for Al Quaeda to pull something like this off if they can and one of the best ones would be Because They Can. In "Future Jihad" Walid Phares describes a speculative alternative scenario to 9/11/01 in which it is put off until 9/11/08 -- and in which the threat of detonation of nukes in US cities is used to blackmail us into submission after a massive conventional asymmetic attack (24 planes, Beslan-style school massacres, cyberattacks, etc.) throws the country into chaos. A single nuke -- even a dirty bomb I suppose, though I agree with Pastorious that the "real thing" is a much greater worry -- would serve to deliver the "look what we can do" message.
While we're on the subject, I'd like to start a running discussion of how to cope with any upcoming catastrophic attack, in terms of survival of course but also where best to focus our energies. I'm semi-retired on a fixed income but my town had a "civilian disaster responders" drive recently and I'm planning to look into that. Watching the rerun of the CNN 9/11 coverage I was very struck by how stunned and unprepared people were. I think the more of us who understand what is really going on who are out there who can be in the forefront in our communities the better.
1. Hamid Mir, the reporter with whom this story originated, is the only journalist to have interviewed Bin Laden after 9/11. Obviously, his sources would be in a position to know what the top ranks of AQ are thinking. He’s been consistent, too: I wrote a post in late May about an interview Mir had given in which he identified Al Qaeda’s nuclear ambitions and even the operative they’ve entrusted to mastermind the attack — Adnan al-Shukrijumah, who inspired a special national terror APB by the FBI back in 2002. Mir’s story is the same today as it was four months ago. The only difference is that now he’s got a target date for the attack. Ramadan, 2006.
2. Would AQ really leak news of a massive attack before it happened? See for yourself. It’s about 30 seconds in, right after the segment on Shanksville. I’d completely forgotten until I saw the footage again yesterday.
3. The Blotter has run not one but two stories about Shukrijumah in the past five days. The only “news” in both stories was that the FBI is looking for him but still hasn’t found him. From September 7th: Shukrijumah is suspected to have had contacts with 9/ll hijack leader Mohammed Atta before leaving the United States shortly before the attacks…
Virtually every one of the FBI’s 56 field offices are involved in the hunt, according to Stuart McArthur, the assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Miami field office, who heads up the bureau’s hunt for Shukrijumah.
Why would they run two stories when there’s no actual news to report?
The Blotter has good sources inside the intelligence community and likes to be ahead of the curve with terrorism stories. Last month, they ran a piece on alleged UK terror plot mastermind Matiur Rehman the day before arrests were made and the plot was publicly revealed. Clearly they’d been tipped to the impending raids and wanted to get in on the ground floor of the story. The fact that they’re putting Shukrijumah’s name out there when there is, to all appearances, no new information about him makes me think their sources are very concerned about him right now, and Brian Ross and co. either don’t know why or they do know and are sitting on sensitive details while the feds try to break up the plot. It’s still probably a false alarm, but I’d raise the worry meter from blue to yellow.
4 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formSurprisingly, a lot of people have already forgotten about the reports of radioactive canisters that were found empty up in the mountains in northern Afghanistan in that bunker that was discovered to be bin Laden's at one time.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006 7:07:00 pm
I never heard about them in the first place. What did they contain; radioactive material?
I'm not nearly as bothered by the prospect of a dirty bomb as I am by the prospect of a nuclear weapons attack.
One would kill hundreds and the other would kill tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006 8:09:00 pm
Ramadan starts this year around the 24th of September and runs for a month. So that's not a precise date but a 30-day window. I'd been worried about November 22 which is another Muslim holiday I think -- Mo's birthday or deathday or something. What concerned me there is that the Iranian elections are going to be held in October and are, of course, rigged, plus our mid-term elections are in November. But that's Iran. Is OBL planning to get the jump on his rival jihadists? An argument could be made for Ramadan not being a great date for an attack like this because it would "tip off" the American public before the elections. But there are plenty of reasons for Al Quaeda to pull something like this off if they can and one of the best ones would be Because They Can. In "Future Jihad" Walid Phares describes a speculative alternative scenario to 9/11/01 in which it is put off until 9/11/08 -- and in which the threat of detonation of nukes in US cities is used to blackmail us into submission after a massive conventional asymmetic attack (24 planes, Beslan-style school massacres, cyberattacks, etc.) throws the country into chaos. A single nuke -- even a dirty bomb I suppose, though I agree with Pastorious that the "real thing" is a much greater worry -- would serve to deliver the "look what we can do" message.
While we're on the subject, I'd like to start a running discussion of how to cope with any upcoming catastrophic attack, in terms of survival of course but also where best to focus our energies. I'm semi-retired on a fixed income but my town had a "civilian disaster responders" drive recently and I'm planning to look into that. Watching the rerun of the CNN 9/11 coverage I was very struck by how stunned and unprepared people were. I think the more of us who understand what is really going on who are out there who can be in the forefront in our communities the better.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006 11:20:00 pm
Revere Rides Again,
If you would like to lead such a discussion, that would be great. I'll give you an invitation to blog here for such purposes.
Let me know if you would like to do so.
Thursday, September 14, 2006 3:53:00 am