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An "American Hiroshima"???

curious presentiment

09:25 / 23.07.05

Joseph Farah's G2 bulletin claims that terrorists already have multiple nukes inside Amereica and plan an "American Hiroshima" on 6. August to coincide with the 60th anneversary of the day america dropped the first nuke. Tellingly the guy wants $9.95 to read his full report. Is this shameless profiteering from peoples fears or is trere a credible threat. What would be the effect on the world should an american city be destroyed. Where would the retaliation point. What would be the effect on the world economy?

All Acting Regiment

09:55 / 23.07.05

I find it very hard to beleive that terrorists have nuclear bombs inside the USA, but I don't really know enough about that or about this Farah character to be any judge of whether or not this is true.

What kind of "terrorists" are these, then? Japanese nationalists? Surely the "Islamic" "Fundamentalists" aren't too keen on Japan (mostly Buddhist or secular as far as I know) and thus there seems little impetus for them to avenge Hiroshima.

This sounds very, very much like profiteering and propaganda, but, as always, I'll be keeping an open mind. Could you provide us with a link?

curious presentiment

10:23 / 23.07.05

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45284

I also find this to be a fairly unbelievable source but accept that it would be a goal of the current Osama inspired lot to nuke America if they could. I'm interested in talking (hypothetically) about what would happen if this did happen; US retalliation, effect on economy etc.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:42 / 23.07.05

It's an interesting idea to treat as a hypothetical, though I won't be loosing much sleep over the possibility or emailing everyone telling them to head for the wilderness.

I suppose Iran would be the obvious target, as we have 'proof' that the 9/11 terrorists went through Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea, the USSR by time-travel and Pangeia when dinosaurs ruled the earth. As their troops are busy wiping out the Iraqi people, would they 'retalliate' with nukes?

curious presentiment

11:47 / 23.07.05

Judging by the US response to 9/11, I think there would be a massive call by Americans to nuke... someone, anyone!
Pretty terrifying stuff.

14:07 / 23.07.05

A U.S. Senator suggested (I'll have to google his name shortly) that the USA should let it be known that if Al Qaeda uses a nuke in America that the response would be the destruction of all sites Al Qaeda deems holy land. I'll try to find the quote.

14:25 / 23.07.05

Ok, it was Congressman Tom Tancredo from Colorado.
From Here
The following is a transcript of a portion of U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo's conversation with talk-radio host Pat Campbell on Friday:

Campbell: Worst-case scenario - if they do have these nukes inside the borders and they were to use something like that, what would our response be?

Tancredo: What would be the response? (pause) Um, you know, there are things you could threaten to do before something like that happens and you may have to do afterwards (unintelligible) draconian.

Campbell: Such as?

Tancredo: Well, what if you said something like, "If this happens in the United States and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims." You could take out their holy sites.

Campbell: You're talking about bombing Mecca?

Tancredo: Yeah. What if you said, "We recognize this is the ultimate threat to the United States, so this is the ultimate response." I'm just throwing out some ideas because you would be talking about taking the most draconian measures you could possibly imagine. Because other than that, all you could do is, once again, tighten up internally
The problem with this is it would kind of fuck up the "We're not battling all Muslims, just the terrorists" when you destroy holy sites worshipped by all Muslims.

17:17 / 23.07.05

Tancredo is a fucking twat. The fact he represents me makes me doubly furious. Why Republicans are consistently fueling the fires of extremism by making moderate Muslims look like fools in the face of GOP rhetoric is beyond me. But my whole rant about Republicans working to assist or give terrorism a wide berth would probably run pages long.

As for Joseph Farah, his ultra-conservative WorldNetDaily.com wants very badly to be taken seriously as real house of journalism. But the truth is, it's only slightly more legitimate than Talon News, and only because it borrows news pieces sometimes from the big boys.

The fact that he's charging $9.99 reads more like a desparate attempt to cash in on fear about terrorism than it does about real journalistic scooping for the public good. He's just trying to get his bills paid.

01:29 / 25.07.05

I see no reason to believe his claims. However, if a terrorist organization could get its hands on a nuclear weapon then it would be ridiculously easy for them to sneak it into the country. That's what some of us believe strong nonproliferation policies are more important than counterproliferation ones.

The U.S. reserves the right to respond to a WMD attack with nuclear weapons. I think that we probably would respond with nukes. With our forces being as stretched out as they are now there's not much of a choice.

05:21 / 25.07.05

isn't mutually assured destruction the best deterrent so far, to nuclear war? of course the theory seems to go out the window when dealing with a small, independant organization, rather than a nationstate.

can MAD be made to work in the current world? maybe if terrosists knew for sure that they would ensure the destruction of mecca, that would dissuade them from using their own nukes against american targets. maybe, but probably not.

even if MAD is outdated, there is no way that america could take being nuked without some sort massive retalitory action, but not neccessarily by launching their own nukes.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

14:56 / 25.07.05

MAD doesn't work when one set of people doesn't mind dying. It's also not really useful when one group of people don't actually have a defined base of operations to strike, which is probably why Senator Braindead up there was suggesting that the best thing to do was something which would turn the entire Muslim world against us, on the grounds it makes it a lot easier to attack the enemy.

20:31 / 25.07.05

MAD also doesn't work because terrorists wouldn't be able to get their hands on enough nuclear weapons to live up to their end of the bargain.

06:31 / 26.07.05

Those are good arguments against Modern MAD. It's true that one side seems willing to sacrifice itself, but would they be willing to to sacrifice millions or more of their own people?

A lot of people consider terrorists to be completely irrational. I don't agree, so I think that there must be SOME deterrent that would work.

07:43 / 26.07.05

Nuking Mecca? Is the guy insane?

Let's face it, the Bush administration probably wouldn't follow this particular advice. If only so as not to piss off their oil dealers in the UAE.

Still, I could see them hitting Iran if someone set off a nuclear device in the US.

The problem with AQ is it's such an utterly cellular and loosely aligned group that conventional military tactics do little to stop it. The invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban sure, but the AQ groups active in the country just upped stakes and moved elsewhere.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

09:32 / 26.07.05

Grime - But terrorists have attacked many, many places where 'their people' live and work, the way it works out is that Muslims that aren't as devout as them and fighting the Western World can be killed because they are 'infidels'. Any Muslims that are fighting the Western world would be happy to die for the cause. Everyone else doesn't count, obviously. So it's a perfect belief system that 'justifies' everyone dying.

lord henry strikes back

11:53 / 26.07.05

I might be slightly out on a limb here but it's possible that an attack on the scale of a nuke being used in a US city would be the final blow to the economy and no real responce would be possible.

The current policy of overspending year on year and then balancing it out with economic growth in the following year requires the economy to keep going forward. It was described to me at uni as a bit like rollerskating up hill: it only takes a small trip and you've had it. If the US economy went into free fall, sort of 1929 style, I think the domestic problems would outway any push to respond. This really depend on the responce of the markets over the first day or two after the attack.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

12:03 / 26.07.05

To me the most persuasive reason to think this is poppycock is the idea that if you you were Al Qaeda and you had a bunch of nukes inside the US, you'd wait until the anniversary of Hiroshima to set them off. What, you need additional symbolism for an act of that scale? Do that, and everything else will be compared to you, not vice versa. And you need that symbolism so badly that, having evaded the FBI and the NYPD (who are very serious about terror-prevention) and all the rest, having got that stuff into the country, you're going to screw around for a few weeks waiting for a significant date, where every hour increases the chance that someone will get wise? Seems a bit weird to me.

It's not new, either - there was a rumour that a ten kilotonne nuke had been smuggled into NYC in October 2001. Note that NYC is still there.

But if this were real... well. Not good. Which I imagine is why it keeps cropping up.

14:22 / 26.07.05

Accordingly to some Esoteric Afro Americans there was a nuclear test that happened last century and it involved alot of the Afro American Navy Personell going down with radiation poisoning, I think it's well documented by people like the Nation of Islam and that. It's a bit Philladelphia Experiment though - more Friend of a Friend than anything. The threat of global terror already functions by itself through the pro quo of Crisis Engineering and Conflict Engineering. We now have ditched the idiom of Mass Global Wars for decades as Low Intensity Conflicts have taken over. Part Fear Installing on part of the Military Industrial Complex and the UN and but also true never the less. Terrorism exists as a Black Mirror to Global Security and Policing Measures. It seems like the Holy Crusades never ended, more than just oil, more than esoteric scripts and colour of skin. Look at what has happened in London, jihads looking from the outside seem like a pathetic after school squabble for territorialism . Bit silly but then if you were an extremist Moslem wouldn't you seem pissed off about how much your lands have got raped and plundered for oil by corporate interests? But then if you were a leading member of the Senate who had connections with major oil corporations wouldn't you push your agenda to the max with the aid of a zen like attitude and spin doctors well tutored in NLP and Propaganda? Firstly Monotheism exerts an Extremism which borders on the Genocidal. Secondly the Global Corporate Machine pushes Exploitation to the Extreme in blatant disregards to Envoirenmentalism and Self Determainations of Indigenous Peoples wherever. Two sides of a rusty and over used coin, I'm afraid.

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:03 / 26.07.05

To me the most persuasive reason to think this is poppycock is the idea that if you you were Al Qaeda and you had a bunch of nukes inside the US, you'd wait until the anniversary of Hiroshima to set them off.

Agreed. Also, Hiroshima doesn't have a lot to do with Islam or the grievances of Islam against the West. I mean, one of the few things that the US has a pretty unimpeachable record on in the Middle East is irradiating it....

17:49 / 26.07.05

not if you count all those spent rounds of depleted uranium.

so 51st century lady, do you think that there could be no deterrant that would work on these guys? in light of your last post, i can't think of any.

if there can be no delicate balance of threat and counter-threat, then what does that imply for this current conflict? is there any other choice besides surrender or completely wiping out the enemy?

21:19 / 26.07.05

It sounds like fear mongering to me esp with the anniversary coming up. It's hogawsh - we hope! On the Japanese issue I remember a patriot went to great lenghts to prove that MCA in collusion with an invisible Japanes org pulled out the Oklahoma Bombing. If this goes on any longer in the West we will see a rise in fervent extremist populist anti-muslim racist anchors like never before. It already appears like it doesn't it?! I can see why a fellow esotericist instructed me to read the Quran to understand the path of Moslem - who's pulling whose strings, we know Bin Laden was CIA trained, let's face it alot of so-called terrorists have had the baudacious privelege of CIA and Green Beret Trainings. Fucking scary - p'haps I should get politicised again instead of acting as a couch potatoe.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

14:43 / 27.07.05

Grime- The only brightside I could see is if these guys turned out to be bluffing. However, there's nothing in the known history of these organisations to suggest they are.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:56 / 27.07.05

Oh, I don't know. An Islamist terrorist organisation took credit for power cuts in London and the Eastern Seaboard that had nothing to do with them ...

01:45 / 28.07.05

Also, didn't two separate groups lay claim to the latest bombings in Egypt?

02:30 / 28.07.05

And the great Chicago fire.

21:15 / 28.07.05

lady - let's hope so . . .

so let's say you're president and terrorists nuke a major american city.

what do you do?

what can you do?