I’m I going insane? Did nobody read the article carefully? Let me post this again, and this time, READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE!
There is nothing in the article that gives me any fear that not nuclear deaths, or even a serious poisoning is coming our way. The article makes facile (to the point of being fallacious) references to “suitcase bombs”, which require a large industrial base and extremely experienced personnel to assemble. This doesn’t impress me as being a credible, I’m hearing way too many weasel-words.
So, let’s consider a dustbomb. Plutonium is quite poisonous, but Pakistan is using Uranium, which is much less so, is primarily an fairly low-energy Alpha and Gamma emmiter, and tends to settle out pretty quickly. Nasty, and likely to cause loads of cancer cases over a decade or two, and some kidney problems, but hardly the end of the world.
Actually, if bin Laden gets his grubby mitts on a nuke, I think it’s far more likely that it gets detonated in Afghanistan. Ferrous above already mentioned the possibility of using it against U.S. ground troops (or their allies), which I think is a distinct possibility, but there’s another alternative. This is kind of far-fetched, but then, after watching the Trade Towers crumble and seeing Tom Brokaw barely able to contain his rage at receiving disease under a first-class stamp, I don’t know if anything is out of bounds any more.
Consider that bin Laden’s MO is demonizing the West, making the U.S. bomb the shit out of an already half-destroyed country, turning himself into a martyr in the eyes of millions of followers or sympathizers. What would happen if a nuclear explosion suddenly ripped through Kabul, or Kandahar, or somewhere similar? Wouldn’t everybody immediately assume that the U.S. had escalated the war? Don’t you think this would further polarize the two sides of the dispute? Isn’t it likely that Pakistan’s leaders would either withdraw from the coalition or lose their tenuous hold on power? And don’t you think that whatever evidence the U.S. could marshal to demonstrate that the explosion was in no way caused by a U.S. device would be dismissed by its detractors as just more lies and propaganda?
I think it’s unlikely that this is his first choice, but if he finds he’s unable to deliver a hypothetical nuclear device to a Western target, there are dumber things he could do with it than use it to send a few thousand of his followers to the afterlife while simultaneously escalating the conflict to an alarming degree. He, of course, would be nowhere near the scene.
I wonder how many people here are familiar with the fact that nuclear material has a signature or fingerprint just like a human being. The exact proportion of isotopes present in the residual fallout makes it possible to trace the origins of the fissile material. Several other countries besides the US have the ability to perform this sort of analysis. It would be relatively easy to scientifically demonstrate that the bomb originated from a country other than the USA. Now, convincing the rest of the Muslim world might be a little more difficult, but the truth would be on our side.
Try to calm down a bit. As to Pakistan being taken over by the Taleban, I think we would have no choice but to take over that country in a New York minute. We all need to be a lot more concerned about ObL shipping a device into the US in an overseas container and detonating it in harbor. Also, try to remember that nuclear devices require a lot of care and feeding. Even if bin Laden could get his hands on a device, the shaped charges that drive the implosion precisely enough to trigger a fission or fusion reaction go stale in about ten years. Any nuke he might buy from the now defunct USSR would most likely be well past its “serve by” date. What concerns me the most is the remote possibility that this maggot could somehow fake a nuclear attack to make it look like it originated from China or some sick shit like that. Do not put it past Al-Qaeda to trigger WW III so that his vision of Islamic domination can rule the remaining world.
We need to crush these sick motherfuckers like the cockroaches that they are. Kill all of them now, not later, now! Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taleban. Right away and not tomorrow. These sick fucks will stop at nothing.