-Caveat Lector-
In way of response ... report posted on www.drudgereport.com earlier this
morning. Just adding as info to this concern. R 09/18/01
-------------------------.......On possible suitcase n. weapons lurking in
the background of the 911 attacks and influencing Bush's response and
subsequent plans. (Sourced from Drudge/www.thetimes.co.uk) .. 01/18/01 <A
HREF="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,248-2001322113,00.html";>The Times
</A> or copy below:
------------------
   The Times (www.thetimes.co.uk) Clearing 2001Â
EDITOR MONDAY SEPTEMBER 17 2001
When the choice is national suicide
WILLIAM REES-MOGG
In the interpretation of state speeches there is a rule of the significance
of the penultimate. The opening and closing passages of a speech are the
place for broad assertions; the middle is the place for the narrative, for
the main argument. Just before the end is the place to slip in a disturbing
concept, a warning that one does not wish to be overemphasised.
There was exactly such a penultimate passage in the Prime Minister’s speech
last Friday to the House of Commons. “We know that these groups are fanatics,
capable of killing without discrimination. Limits on the numbers they kill
and their methods of killing are not governed by morality. The limits are
only practical or technical. We know that they would, if they could, go
further and use chemical or biological or even nuclear weapons of mass
destruction. We know also that there are groups or people, occasionally
states, who trade the technology and capability for such weapons. It is time
this trade was opposed, disrupted and stamped out. We have been warned by the
events of September 11. We should act on the warning.”
Dr Henry Kissinger, who was the most powerful US Secretary of State of the
past 40 years, is still used as a well-briefed expositor of US foreign policy
in times of crisis. In his current article for the Los Angeles Times
Syndicate, there is a similar near penultimate paragraph. “Even the smallest
nuclear weapon would produce devastation far dwarfing the catastrophe of the
attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.” If Tony Blair and Henry
Kissinger both emphasise the threat of nuclear terrorism, they probably have
good reason.
Many recent intelligence studies of the threats to American security have
referred to the possible possession of nuclear weapons by terrorist groups,
and particularly Osama bin Laden’s network. An anonymous paper, prepared
earlier in the year, which is circulating in the City of London, alleges that
“bin Laden’s possession of weapons of mass destruction is generally
considered (in intelligence circles) to be a given . . . bin Laden’s original
plan was to build his own tactical nuke. His emissaries have conducted
several missions to Europe in an attempt to bring back enriched uranium . . .
Reports emerging from Israel and Russia suggest that bin Laden gave his
contacts in the Chechen Mafia several million dollars in cash, and heroin
with a street value of more than $500 million — in exchange, the Chechens
launched an all-out campaign to obtain (ex-Soviet) nuclear suitcase bombs for
al-Qaeda (bin Laden’s core group).
“One source even suggests that bin Laden obtained several of these nuclear
suitcase bombs in the autumn of 1998 and transferred them into storage in the
Taleban’s main secure complex near Kandahar. The same source also claims that
the weapons have not yet been used because they are still programmed with a
Soviet era coding system that requires a signal from Moscow before detonation
is possible. Another source confirms this information and even specifies that
the number of tactical nuclear weapons acquired by bin Laden is close to 20.”
This is an account of raw intelligence data, which may or may not be
reliable. The terrorists themselves have reason to lie about their possession
of nuclear weapons. If they do not have them, they can still use the belief
that they do as a threat. If they really do have them, they may not want to
draw attention to the fact. However, both the Blair and Kissinger statements,
and public evidence given to Congress earlier this year by George Tenet,
Director of the CIA, show how seriously the intelligence community takes this
possibility. Bin Laden may indeed have nuclear weapons, which could still be
in Afghanistan, but could already be hidden near their targets.
US response on the day of the attacks supports this view of the threat. If a
similar attack had occurred in the late 1940s, when Truman was President,
there is no doubt the President’s instinct would have been to return to the
White House at once. That was, indeed, what many Americans expected President
Bush to do. The fact that he was first flown to a nuclear command bunker in
Nebraska may suggest that his security advisers thought that the New York and
Washington attacks might be a trap, with a tactical nuclear strike on the
White House as the possible follow-up. Any President might have felt he
should risk his own life to get back to the White House; no President would
have felt he should risk a nuclear explosion in the centre of Washington.
If one reads the situation in these terms, then the war against terrorism
which President Bush has announced becomes a different sort of war, with much
higher stakes, but perhaps also with a more realistic possibility of victory.
Conventional terrorism is extraordinarily hard to eliminate, because there
are always countries which have some sympathy for the terrorists, if not for
their methods. In Britain we have experience of that. The IRA received
essential support not only from openly terrorist countries such as Libya, but
from friendly countries such as the Republic of Ireland or the United States
itself.
Terrorist organisations can recover quickly from big setbacks. Abraham
Lincoln used a metaphor to describe what happens. At a low point, early in
the Civil War, the Union armies were being depleted by diversions. Lincoln
said: “To fill up the Army is like undertaking to shovel fleas. You take up a
shovel full but before you can dump them anywhere they are gone.” Defeating
conventional terrorists, on an individual basis, is indeed like shovelling
fleas. Breaking up a terrorist organisation, which depends on the support of
foreign states, may be more feasible if the other states come to feel that
the terrorism has become a mortal threat to them.
We have seen the American reaction to the attacks on the World Trade Centre
and the Pentagon. These were very serious attacks, causing casualties greater
than those at Pearl Harbor, but they were conventional attacks. Suppose that
they were now to be followed with nuclear attacks, even using, as Dr
Kissinger envisages, “the smallest nuclear weapons”.
It is already certain that a nuclear attack by any foreign state on the
United States would be followed by a nuclear counter-attack. However, it
seems almost equally probably that a terrorist nuclear attack, even if it
were not directly controlled by a foreign state, would lead to a nuclear
response by the US against any state that had in any way supported the
terrorist group. So long as the threat is the conventional one, there is a
certain flexibility; if there were to be a terrorist nuclear attack on the
United States, the response against any nation harbouring the terrorists
would be instantaneous and terrible.
The United States is now organising a global coalition to destroy all
terrorism, particularly the Islamic terrorist network of Osama bin Laden. The
major powers of the world all recognise that terrorism is a threat to them.
China, Russia, India, Japan, the Nato countries are all in line, whatever
quibbles there may be. So are the Islamic countries which are friendly to the
United States. There are, however, a number of Islamic countries which have
longstanding quarrels with the United States; most of them have had past
connections with terrorist groups.
They now face an appalling risk. Apart from Afghanistan, they have no control
over bin Laden. Even the Taleban, though they may conceivably control the
bombs, cannot control the terrorist network. Facing this risk, some of the
most anti-American countries are already dissociating themselves from the
terrorists. Libya is backing off. In Iran, the conservative Ayatollah
Emami-Kashani, who has been no friend to the US, told worshippers in Tehran
on Friday that “this heartbreaking event is worrisome to all humanity”.
Indeed it is.
The aim of American policy is to build a universal coalition against
terrorism, so as to isolate the terrorists, depriving them of any state
refuge or any state support. If these were only conventional terrorists, that
might be hard to achieve and harder to sustain. If, however, the intelligence
reports are correct, and bin Laden does have some access to nuclear weapons,
then even the most sympathetic Islamic states cannot afford to associate with
him in any way. It is one thing to be a suicide bomber; it is another thing
to become a suicide country.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on Times
Newspapers' standard terms and conditions. To inquire about a licence to
reproduce material from The Times,
September 17, 2001Â Â Â
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