As I write this on Friday, March 28, U.S. troops are outside Baghdad. The war has not been a quick dash to Baghdad with thousands of liberated Iraqi citizens cheering in the wake of the advancing forces. In short, the invasion has been stalled and the military leaders must be in frantic mode trying to decide what to do next.
Nobody knows what tricks Saddam has up his sleeves, but one that I’ve been thinking about is this. Suppose he goes on Iraqi state TV, and it’s clear that it’s really him, not a double. And it’s not him videotaped 10 weeks ago either, because he is spot on in his detailed description of the current status of the invasion.
Then he issues this dire threat/warning: If the invading troops enter Baghdad, New York City will be hit with a dirty bomb that will release enough radiation to make a large part of Manhattan unlivable for decades (as well as killing and wounding hundreds of people).
How do you think the U.S. government would respond to that? Would they call his bluff? To do so would risk hundreds of lives and economic ruin, because he may really be able to do what he says.
What are the odds that Saddam even has this ability to launch such an attack, or one with mustard gas or nerve gas?
What if the target city were London, or Tel Aviv? What would the coalition leaders decide?
What would you want them to do?
I must say that I don’t know what I would do, but I’m just scared that Saddam has a nasty trick up his sleeve along the lines of this scenario or something equally devious and too scary to contemplate.
First, our government’s been saying all along that Saddam doesn’t have the wherewithall to have completed a nuclear weapon. All we’ve been looking for are research facilities, or plants being modified so they would be able to manufacture them. Our basic assumption from this is that he doesn’t have nukes, clean or dirty.
Second, Saddam doesn’t need dirty bombs to wound or kill hundreds of Americans. All he needs is sleeper terrorists with conventional diesel-fertilizer bombs in minivans they bought five years ago, and he could kill thousands of people if they’re placed correctly.
That’s the setup before we even fired a single shot. We knew that going into this, and we know it now.
A dirty bomb is NOT a nuke! It is a conventional explosive device designed to disperse radioactive material, not hard to do and well within the ability of anyone with access to radiological material.
Bush’s reply: “Hey, it’s New York City, who cares?”
Okay, so that would be my reply, but then I’m a country mouse, not a city mouse.
Really, this sort of threat would be unverifiable, and, as such, we really couldn’t make policy based on it. We have to continue in our mission and deal with the reactions of tyrants and terrorists as they come. I am not saying that we can’t try to stop these events, merely that we can’t live in and base our actions on fear.
I think they’d call his bluff, and if he’s not bluffing, the invasion of Baghdad would be huge and as quick as possible, with no regard for civilians.
I don’t think, no matter what he claimed, that a dirty nuke would make a city unliveable for any real length of time. People more than a few blocks away for maybe a week would have about a 2% higher incidence of cancer than the rest of the population, or something along those lines (soufce - best I can remember a Scientific American article a few months ago).
Check my last post - a dirty nuke of 3500 curies of cesium would increase the cancer risk about 10% within 20 blocks if people continued to live there, for about 30 years.
You may be right about the technical details of cesium–but that’s not the point. If everybody is afraid to continue living there for 30 years,they will leave the area, and NY would be effectively destroyed.