NEWS: Report: Zarqawi is Now A Nuclear Threat, page 1
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Topic started on 21-4-2005 @ 07:59 AM by thelibra
According to classified reports since December, Zarqawi has a dirty bomb hidden in Afghanistan, and is preparing to use it against either the United States, or Europe. The reports are only just now starting to come to light because the intelligence has yet to be verified. While it is "well within al Qaeda's capabilities" to produce a radiological bomb, the gaps in information surrounding their non-conventional weaponry leave much in question.



www.washtimes.com
Recurrent intelligence reports say al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi has obtained a nuclear device or is preparing a radiological explosive -- or dirty bomb -- for an attack, according to U.S. officials, who also say analysts are unable to gauge the reliability of the information's sources.

The classified reports have been distributed to U.S. intelligence agencies for several consecutive months and say Zarqawi, al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, has stored the nuclear device or dirty bomb in Afghanistan, said officials familiar with the intelligence.

One official said the intelligence is being questioned because analysts think al Qaeda would not hesitate to use a nuclear device if it had one.

However, the fact that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has reported the nuclear threat in several classified reports distributed since December indicates concern about it.

A DIA spokesman had no comment.


Please visit the link provided for the complete story.


I don't know whether to be more worried or annoyed by this report.

The skeptic in me says that it is unknown if Abu Musab Zarqawi is even alive anymore, much less his questionable connection to Al Qaeda (which has been born entirely on speculation). When our own intelligence is describing him as the second most dangerous terrorist in the world (next to Bin Laden), but can't even get straight their description of him, I question it myself. The fact that Zarqawi was a complete non-entity until 2004--a full year after he was declared by Colin Powell to be Saddam's connection to the Al Qaeda network--has left me wondering if he really is just a boogeyman. Perhaps this whole report is just another facade to justify a war that can never end.

Then there's the frosted side, the side that says "Maybe... just maybe They are right. Maybe the threat of terrorism really is as bad as the government says. After all, if I have to choose a side, why not choose the side that at least doesn't hate America? Why not choose the side that at least claims to be protecting me? If I can't trust the government, whom can I trust with the fate of my nation? Am I going to turn into one of those nuts who won't believe anything the White House says, just because They said it?"

Terrorism itself is nothing new. We've always been going through it, in one form or another. National Geographic ran an article regarding terrorism that put a lot of it in perspective. Our great grandparents were just as worried about it as we are today, as were their grandparents, and so forth. The biggest difference is that terrorists used to only target specific organizations--usually government. This is because it was considered dishonorable to attack civilians, and public sympathy was extremely important for the cause. Generally such attacks only occurred within one's country, to appeal to their countrymen, and the message they were trying to get across was made crystal clear. A terrorist, while never a good word, used to be more in line with what we now call a "revolutionary". We now live in an era where slaughtering innocents is a perfectly acceptable form of terrorism. Leaving a message is considered optional. Like high-schoolers with a truck, a bat, and a row of mailboxes, there doesn't have to be any rhyme or reason for modern-day attacks. Even accountability has been removed with the advent of suicide bombings.

All you need is capability, and a group of people stupid enough to go along with the plan. The capabilities for terrorists to create a dirty bomb exist. The world has never had a shortage of stupid people. Why should it be so hard to believe that some of them have managed to achieve what we knew they could do all along, and are intending to use it?

Related News Links:
atimes.com
magma.nationalgeographic.com
cfrterrorism.org
www.dailytimes.com.pk

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Could Terrorists Set Off a Nuke in the USA? Yes. Easily.
Do you have any question about *Jihad* ???
politics.abovetopsecret.com...
politics.abovetopsecret.com...

[edit on 22-4-2005 by John bull 1]


reply posted on 21-4-2005 @ 01:23 PM by thelibra
Originally posted by xmotex
If a nuke goes off in a US city, I'll bet my left one it will be somewhere in a Blue state. It will happen when GWB's popularity drops below a given level, and when we need a justification to invade somebody (probably Iran, maybe Venezuala - an easier military target) that "just happens" to have a lot of oil.

And the usual suspects will bluster and bloviate, calling for murderous revenge against brown-skinned foreigners somewhere, despite any evidence the orders came from Washington DC and not Tehran or Caracas.


Wow... and I thought I was getting paranoid.

Despite what you may have watched on 24 I don't think anyone in the U.S. Government who was in a position to pull those kind of strings ever would. The economic and political backlash would be too horrible to consider. For one, if a bomb went off in the U.S. today, more people would be calling for the blood of those in charge of the nation, because even before the truth got out, those who allowed it to happen would be hung out to dry, including the President at the time it happens, and especially if that President's whole campaign was about how much more security he could bring us.

Bush may ride the short bus to the White House, but there's no way he, or anyone in his administration would be retarded enough to think setting off a nuke in the U.S. as a scare tactic would be anything better than disasterous.


reply posted on 21-4-2005 @ 01:50 PM by thelibra
It strikes me as ironic.

I mean, I don't take the comments disregarding the alert personally; Lord knows our Government has given us plenty of reason to disregard such alerts. But it strikes me as ironic that people who are so fervently willing to believe that black triangles are being piloted by psychic reptillian vampires from Atlantis simply refuse to acknowledge that a person who exists in the real world, who has the capability to do so, might have actually developed a dirty bomb (the nuclear equivolent of a zip-gun).

Has your world really become that disjointed?

Why do we even have a terror-alarm section in the news anyway? It seems to me that reverse credibility applies here; an article from the Weekly World News would be more likely to be believed than anything regarding terrorist activity.

Bah! I'm going back to reporting science. At least some people can believe in that.
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