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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend....
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To: Sully- who wrote (9406)4/21/2005 9:47:55 AM
From: Sully-   of 35834
 
R.P. Eddy: "Look for Nuclear Weapons in the RDD Haystack"

The Counterterrorism Blog
By Andrew Cochran

Contributing Expert R.P. Eddy, former senior U.N. and N.S.C. counterterrorism official, asked me to post this for him:

From a story by Bill Gertz in yesterday's Washington Times:

<<<

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.. The classified reports say Zarqawi, al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, has stored the nuclear device or dirty bomb in Afghanistan.
>>>

While reports of terrorists possessing either an RDD or a nuclear weapon are bad news, credible intelligence of terrorists overseas possessing the latter would be cause for defensive measures approaching a lock-down of our borders and a massive increase in federal and policing activity.

On the other hand, credible intelligence of terrorists with an RDD overseas should cause nothing near the same level of response. It is quite likely a terrorist can assemble an RDD in nearly any industrialized city - here or abroad. Radioactive waste is a by-product of mining, medicine, even dentistry. For this reason, to learn that they have created an RDD overseas would make me think the intended target is overseas as well - why go to the trouble to transport it to the US when they can make one here? (An exception would be if they came upon stores of some of the most highly toxic radioactive materials that are better protected in the US.)

So in a resource constrained environment, how to prioritize and act on information that mentions radioactive material? Is the threat nearly a show-stopper or is it simply newsworthy?

counterterror.typepad.com

manhattan-institute.org

washingtontimes.com
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