But democracies, and especially the US, has always had a history of being reactive, not proactive. Bush is the first president to really make "pre-emption" of potential future threats a foreign policy agenda.
Something that seems very hard to get across to people is that we can not afford to be reactive. Being reactive with these potential threats is waiting for a CBN attack on a major US city. We know these people wish to harm us, we know their potential capabilities. Waiting for the hammer to fall isn't an option.
From Janes:
janes.com
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Al-Qaeda and the bomb
Al-Qaeda, and to a lesser extent other terrorist groups, are currently capable of conducting attacks with chemical, biological, radiological or even nuclear weapons, according to an internal CIA intelligence directorate report published in May 2003.
The CIA report, Terrorist CBRN: Materials and Effects, did not say where the Bush administration believes such an attack might be launched, but that it was "a high probability" that it would be in the next two years. The US assessment claims that any such CBRN attack would probably be "small-scale", incorporating relatively crude delivery means and easily produced or obtained chemicals, toxins or radiological substances.
Much of the evidence for these claims is drawn from documents, diagrams and other material found at around 40 sites in Afghanistan where Al-Qaeda operated training camps for its militants.
It has also been alleged by the CIA that Al-Qaeda was working with former scientists of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Bashir Ud-din Mahmood and Abdul Majeed. These charges have been denied by Pakistani officials. Nevertheless, handwritten documents uncovered in Afghanistan suggest that Al-Qaeda's specialists did have nuclear physics and weaponisation knowledge that exceeded the type of information available via open and declassified sources.
The authors of the CIA report believed Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups to be capable of making an "improvised nuclear device" that would be "intended to cause a yield-producing nuclear explosion". The report claims that the group's experts could make such a weapon with "diverted nuclear-weapons components", by modifying an already assembled nuclear weapon or by using a self-designed weapon.
As JID has pointed out previously, sophisticated and well-financed terrorist groups would need a team of at least three to four skilled individuals to design and make a fission weapon, with expertise in physics, explosives, and the metallurgical properties of the plutonium or uranium (or neptunium) to be used.
As has been emphasised by both scientists and intelligence community sources, the nuclear threat from terrorists is more likely to be from radiological weapons than from a nuclear device, and that materials for such weapons - such as caesium 137, strontium 90 and cobalt 60 - are widely used in hospitals, universities and various industries.
Al-Qaeda is also claimed by the CIA report to have "crude procedures" for making mustard agent, sarin and VX, as well as access to toxic cyanides and less dangerous industrial materials, such as chlorine and phosgene. Members of Al-Qaeda cells are alleged to have attempted to launch 'poison plot' attacks in Europe with chemicals and toxins. The relatively easy availability of many common chemicals which could have dual-use adds credibility to this assertion. |
