To add to your “Crazy Mahmoud” Sneak Attack” scenario – if they do manage a nuclear attack on Israel, I have no doubt that Israel will be able to retaliate and one target will be Mecca – try to imagine EVER having peace after that.

happi on June 17, 2009 at 9:19 PM

The only way to have peace after glassing one of the “big three” of Islam* would be to nail all three sites simultaneously (what some call a ‘home run’), as well as inflict heavy civilian casualties on as much of the Arab world as possible. I know that’s a terribly coldblooded thing to say, but if Israel didn’t, within days they’d have every Muslim who could wield a rusty AK-47 going after them in the manner of a Zerg rush. Besides going the ‘fortress Israel’ route (VERY risky) the only way to survive the certain mob charge would be to sufficiently disorganize the nearby populace and drastically cut down their numbers.

Now…assuming a successful “home run” and survival of the frothing horde, there MIGHT actually be a very good chance for peace. Islam is an incredibly site-specific religion, and if those sites go kablooie they cannot be replaced nor could substitutes be made for them. Imagine if not one single Muslim could make the pilgrimage because the place simply didn’t exist!

*Dome of the Rock, Mecca, Medina.

… aggressively spreading democracy is the best long-term defense against nuclear terror …

Like Iraqi or Afghani “democracy” … or should we just send a large coke and fries to the tyrants.

Spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the best long-term defense against death.

The question has been asked if Islam itself could survive the destruction of Mecca.

Nope. In their minds, Allah could not possibly allow it, especially if you take out Medina and Dome o’ the Rock while you’re at it. It would prove he does not exist. Islam as we know it would likewise cease to exist.

No not quite: If I am in charge, A series of surgical strikes in Mecca all around the Ka’aba, but not touching it. And then through those channels that we all know stay open to Syria, Iran etc. and I give them a list of names, whose heads I want to see literally on a silver platter on my desk in 24 hours or we all know where the next missile is going to hit.

Teacher in Tejas on June 18, 2009 at 12:46 AM

So you’re suggesting we retaliate by nuking everything around the Ka’aba, but leaving it untouched… so the Muslims would still be obligated to make their pilgrimage to the site, except now they would have to march through a radioactive wasteland to get there? Dude, that’s cold. I hope the Pentagon gets in touch with you to flesh out that battle plan. Deterrence, like revenge, is a dish best served cold.

Doctor Zero on June 18, 2009 at 8:06 AM

Actually Doc, I should have been more clear. I did not mean nukes in Mecca, but a series of cruise missle hits, with pin point precision. The question has been asked if Islam itself could survive the destruction of Mecca. This was debated at lengh on Donald Sensing’s old blog and others a few years back.

Islam is a “place specific” religion more so than any of the others including Judaism; the Jews lasted for two millenia without a holy land. Likewise the Roman Catholic church would definitely go on if Rome were destroyed.

The utter destruction of God’s holiest place on earth would definitely cause a rethinking of the tenets of that religion. And I think the threat of that is something that most Muslim state leaders would not be willing to occur, lest their subject people’s begin thinking about what it all means, and starts asking questions about those “Islamic governments.”

Here is the Nightmare Scenario

A major political party, academia and the mass media is infiltrated over a period of 50 years. Eventually, although reasonable and patriotic citizens exist, the control of the public message is so overwhelming that any reasonable and patriotic voices left are afraid of speaking the truth. The actions of the infiltrated party have many glaring examples throughout history to define them, but true history is no longer taught in the infiltrated schools and the words that describe these actions have either been turned into unacceptable profanity or have been changed to describe only the members of the opposition parties. Definitions in 1950′s dictionaries that described the actions of the villains of the last world war now have been changed to describe aspects of the opposition party ideology. The language is totally controlled by the infiltrators and a generation has been trained to believe that deciding what to have for dinner or watch on TV is “thinking” and the public no longer has the intellectual curiosity to understand with any coherence the behavior and action of their semi-elected officials. Eventually, when the time is right, the infiltrators throw all their resources into promoting a socially acceptable, photogenic stalking horse. The media is a willing and active accomplice in selling the false prophet and the populace is dumbed down to the point that seemingly intelligent individuals no longer have the cognitive ability to separate reality from their own emotional dysfunction. In addition, a cult of personality has been created where an individual’s ability to reach a certain level of fame is the only characteristic needed for the masses to raise that person to the “elite” class. The citizenry has accepted the position of inferiority and helplessness created for them by the infiltrators. In this noisy and directionless culture, intentionally created over 50 years, the limited attention span and intellectual ability of the masses allows the false prophet to be swept into office in a barrage of glossy advertisements and meaningless sound bites and slogans. The national legislative bodies are also taken control of as weaker clones of the prophet are swept into office on the wave of ignorance and apathy. Once in control, the infiltrators, now known as the Leaders, rapidly and ruthlessly dismantle the systems and protections that allowed for the creation of the most successful nation state the world had ever known. The enemies of that nation state, in collusion with the infiltrators for 50 years, sit and wait victoriously for the certain and near time when their resources will not have to be spent on horrifying weapons of mass destruction or covert activities but can be turned to financing the chains that will enslave the one time proud populace and creating the machinery and systems that will plunder the resources so long denied it’s rightful owners.

The fear of nuclear armed terrorists is a Trojan horse concealing the true nature of the danger and evil at our doorstep.

No not quite: If I am in charge, A series of surgical strikes in Mecca all around the Ka’aba, but not touching it. And then through those channels that we all know stay open to Syria, Iran etc. and I give them a list of names, whose heads I want to see literally on a silver platter on my desk in 24 hours or we all know where the next missile is going to hit.

Teacher in Tejas on June 18, 2009 at 12:46 AM

So you’re suggesting we retaliate by nuking everything around the Ka’aba, but leaving it untouched… so the Muslims would still be obligated to make their pilgrimage to the site, except now they would have to march through a radioactive wasteland to get there? Dude, that’s cold. I hope the Pentagon gets in touch with you to flesh out that battle plan. Deterrence, like revenge, is a dish best served cold.

If, however, a nuclear attack occurred under Bush’s watch, and we weren’t already around the world after 911, we would certainly fight this enemy, regardless of whether the Eurotrash respected us. They have been and will be our “friends” regardless of the lack of love for us.

Mommypundit on June 18, 2009 at 6:50 AM

I had the same thought – we’d never sit on the sidelines after an attack on Europe, and I think we’re a couple of Obamas away from a president being able to survive doing so. Also, the risk-to-reward ratio for nuclear terror in Europe is too low. They’re already pretty far down the list of serious opponents in the jihad’s eyes, while some of the European states are actually more likely to react with immediate, deadly fury to such an attack than we are. For all the smarmy talk about “unilateralism” the French like to toss around in the United Nations, they move quickly and ruthlessly when they feel threatened themselves – just ask Greenpeace.

A hole I see in the scenarios is unintended consequences. No matter how well you plan, complicated endeavors may not have the desired outcome.

What could Berlin do? Or Rome? Or Tokyo? Or even nuclear powers like France or the UK?

What would Americans be willing to sacrifice to save Frankfurt, Lyon, Milan, or Osaka?

Very little, I suspect. Very little.

shropshirelad on June 17, 2009 at 10:27 PM

I only agree if Obama is in office. If, however, a nuclear attack occurred under Bush’s watch, and we weren’t already around the world after 911, we would certainly fight this enemy, regardless of whether the Eurotrash respected us. They have been and will be our “friends” regardless of the lack of love for us.

KyMouse on June 18, 2009 at 6:19 AM

How easy would this be? I have thought the same thing. It only takes a few…and there are many within the US who are willing. They could travel across the US without suspicion. They could network without scrutiny. Malls, churches, parks, etc. I really cannot believe this hasn’t been planned. It’s either a testimony to our good intelligence, or, it is a sign that a big one is coming.

Retaliation for a strike?

Turn Mecca and Medina into a glass parking lot.

broker1 on June 17, 2009 at 9:01 PM

No not quite: If I am in charge, A series of surgical strikes in Mecca all around the Ka’aba, but not touching it. And then through those channels that we all know stay open to Syria, Iran etc. and I give them a list of names, whose heads I want to see literally on a silver platter on my desk in 24 hours or we all know where the next missile is going to hit.

F#!# it all.

right2bright on June 17, 2009 at 7:19 PM
.
May I suggest taking an Evelyn Wood course.
.
And people said math was hard. /s

Unless the enemy gets something incredibly gruesome, like weaponized ebola, off the ground, biological and chemical weapons are the Hyundai Genesis to the Lexus of nuclear bombs – technically comparable and lots cheaper, but lacking the mystique.

Doctor Zero on June 17, 2009 at 10:48 PM

A real Hyundai, or more like a number of Yugos, would be to simply replicate the D.C. snipers. Units of 2, or just solo, maybe 20 guys, like 9/11, 19 + 1, each unit going around the country hitting city after city from each unit’s list of 10-25 cities. Strike 1 to a few times in a city, playing it by ear, then on to another city. The D.C. snipers cause a pretty fair amount of terror in the D.C. area, so imagine the effect nationwide. It would probably take quite some time to even catch most of them. it took a while to catch the D.C. snipers and they weren’t very careful at all.

Bottom line: Going down without a fight is simply unacceptable. No president would remain president for long if he demanded a day in the World Court in response to an attack on our soil causing thousands or millions of lives.

troyriser_gopftw on June 17, 2009 at 9:22 PM

That’s the part of all this that lingers as the great and terrible unsettled question for me. What would we do in response to an attack like this? Somehow I don’t think “sheets of glass” would be the minority opinion, and we are a country whose leaders are chosen through elections. If the response to 9/11 had been strongly worded letters to the U.N., a round of economic sanctions against the Taliban, and the kind of hapless law-enforcement approach Clinton ordered after the Cole bombing, I doubt the administration would have lasted to the midterm elections in 2002. If any president contemplates responding to a nuclear attack with anything except overwhelming force, we’ll find out just how fast a U.S. president can be removed from office. Knowing this, an enemy who has studied our political culture would want to create a situation where the expectations of the public are impossible to meet – give us no targets to strike, or too many targets, or set up a situation where retaliation would bring us into direct and possibly physical conflict with other major powers. A relatively small nuclear wound could be made far more severe because of such convulsions.

These devices were 28 cm by 30 cm.
- Carey Sublette (18 May 2002)

MB4 on June 17, 2009 at 9:45 PM

So we might have sailed past the suitcase nuke and entered the realm of the lunchbox nuke? Great!

Frankly, if I were a terrorist, I think I would probably go with putting the toxin botulism in food. In fact, spread the rumor! It’s in All you Can Eat Buffets all over the country! It will help cut down on obesity.

MB4 on June 17, 2009 at 9:58 PM

The original question that led to this post was specifically about nuclear terrorism, but you’ve got to admit, bio-weapons give a lot of evil bang for the buck too. Wasn’t there a Clancy novel where the bad guys were dispensing weaponized ebola out of shaving cream cans? I think there’s a certain terror cachet about nukes that’s hard to duplicate with anything else, though. It might not be entirely logical, as a biological or chemical attack could be easier to pull off and just as lethal, but the terror effect from anything radioactive would be incomparable. Unless the enemy gets something incredibly gruesome, like weaponized ebola, off the ground, biological and chemical weapons are the Hyundai Genesis to the Lexus of nuclear bombs – technically comparable and lots cheaper, but lacking the mystique.

but I take comfort in knowing that intelligence and counter-terrorism professionals are way ahead of me on this.

\

hehe…Is this an attempt to be funny?

You have some sort of confidence that the same folks who didn’t see 9/11 coming, who didn’t stop Saddam from moving his weapons out of Iraq, who had no idea of the various infiltrators in our agencies are going to have some clue on how to stop any of those attacks. muahahahaha…They have gotten lucky, lucky that our military has killed so many of their leaders and lucky that the remaining Islamic Nutjobs have taken to Napoleon’s dictim. Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

Our mistake is we are surrendering to Islam what the jihadist always wanted. Why die?

What could Berlin do? Or Rome? Or Tokyo? Or even nuclear powers like France or the UK?

What would Americans be willing to sacrifice to save Frankfurt, Lyon, Milan, or Osaka?

Very little, I suspect. Very little.

but I take comfort in knowing that intelligence and counter-terrorism professionals are way ahead of me on this.

Ya think?

This is probably a fair description of the W-54 Davy Crockett warhead. This warhead was the lightest ever deployed by the US, with a minimum mass of about 23 kg [50 lbs] (it also came in heavier packages) and had yields ranging from 10 tons up to 1 Kt in various versions. The warhead was basically egg-shaped with the minor axis of 27.3 cm and a major axis of 40 cm. The test devices for this design fired in Hardtack Phase II (shots Hamilton and Humboldt on 15 October and 29 October 1958) weighed only 16 kg [35 lbs.], impressively close to the minimum mass estimated above. These devices were 28 cm by 30 cm.
- Carey Sublette (18 May 2002)

You did not mention one thing, though: the domestic response of the administration – certainly the present one, perhaps any.

The FIRST step, or one of the first steps, will be to put the whole country on lockdown by declaring martial law and start the business of rounding up all known weapons. Why? Because they know that once the shock wears off, Americans will be orders of magnitude more pissed than they were on 9/11, only this time they’ll be pissed at the government incompetents who, through inaction or deliberate choice, will have allowed it to happen (not closing the borders, scanning Grandma at the airport while allowing Achmed to go on his merry way, constantly asking what we did wrong, etc). That in itself will lead to a bloodbath we haven’t seen since the Civil War.

“How would we get the evidence to prove otherwise, since we have loudly declared we will never use coercive interrogation techniques?”

We have already set one of the scenarios in motion……..

………… those who want to destroy us see our current weakness, and know it is time to strike.

Ironically, Obama will have fired or arrested the person or team that was put in place to stop it before it happens…….

……… Keep watch on the constant attempts to hack our databases that control our infrastructure, power grids, water supplies, and communications.

Once they go………..

…………. don’t look into the light.

Turn Mecca and Medina into a glass parking lot.

What are your thoughts on an EMP attack using most of the same scenarios?
Would that particular technology make it easier to detect who was responsible?

katy on June 17, 2009 at 7:41 PM

I too would like some insight without having to read a book right now. Thanks though E T Cartman for the reference material.

The latest anthrax reference from al-Qaida was interesting. There are some bio-warfare materials not so hard to make, or steal. To me they would be easier to smuggle in and spread than setting off a nuke.

A fear I have is an attack on our nuclear power plants. I have read where some of these have been entered by unauthorized peoples with no notice by security. That was some time back, but it is still a concern of mine.

We attend college sporting events quite often. The yutes play college soccer, and I LOVE college football. I very much worry about these type of events, along with grocery stores, schools, churches, and daycares. Notice the last one listed was on Carlos Bledsoe’s list. I refuse to call him by his preferred Muslim name! Any of the afore mentioned scary scenarios could be deployed, and there are always people like Carlos who will use guns.

I cannot remember where I read this, but some terrorist recently said they did not need to have all the elements for a big bang, nuclear bomb or another attack using airplanes. He said they could go forward with attacks similar to those practiced on Israel. My take was the reference was to suicide bombers with the backpacks and belts. But these people are not rational, so who knows?

Regardless of what they do, I vote with all who say it is just a matter of when. I wish someone would study up on how these terrorists decide when, and where they attack. 9-11 was picked for a reason, and there has been much said about that, but something tells me we need to be thinking about how they come to select these dates. Some might say our intelligence has performed this task, but I wonder. They have been greatly weakened as of late.

I read the entire article, and thought it was informative. To me, it was also an alert, and a call for all of us to never let our guards down. We need to be like the Boy Scouts, and always be prepared. Our bridges, rail system, and financial system if attacked could cause this nation to come to a skreetching halt. Are you ready if it did?

The resulting EMP will spoil the computers on so many cars that the economic chaos and disorder will be incalculable. So will the political disorder that follows. Obama would probably have genuine cause to cancel elections.

You don’t have to miniaturize a nuke if you bring it in on a ship or just want to lob it 50 miles or so – the lowest of low tech will do the job just fine, thanks.

I remember, please help, there was an airplane bombing years ago and when they arrested him it came to pass that he had Diplomatic immunity from Saddam Hussein.

What are your thoughts on an EMP attack using most of the same scenarios?
Would that particular technology make it easier to detect who was responsible?

katy on June 17, 2009 at 7:41 PM

The EMP scenario sounds like the most likely to me.

It’s hard enough to develop nuclear weapons and ICBMs, but it takes another leap in technology to build viable reentry vehicles and small nukes to fit in them, as well as delivering them accurately enough to hit a specific city from halfway around the world.

Much easier to just lob the nuke to a point a couple hundred miles over the center of the US and detonate it there for the EMP effect. You don’t need much accuracy and you don’t need a reentry vehicle.

The damage would be horrific, but only in an economic sense. Which further complicates our response.

Haven’t read “One Second After”, but it sounds good… er, *bad*, but good.

The most obvious culprit here would be North Korea, which has literally starved itself to death in pursuit of atomic weapons.

Well, no…

It has literally starved itself.

However, if it had literally starved itself to death, it would be dead.

Just had to get that off my chest.

I have to imagine an EMP attack would be one of the more difficult ones to trace to the source, particularly since it would destroy so much of the data that would be needed for the task. The intelligence community certainly has hardened data storage systems, but the general network chaos from such a massive system disruption would make any sort of electronic intelligence painfully difficult to gather… not to mention the horrific collateral damage from an EMP wave hitting commercial aviation during peak hours at major airport hubs.

Dr. Zero,

One thing to keep in mind is that the US Military spent a great deal of time and money on hardening specific targets against an EMP attack. A good deal would be vulnerable, for sure, but important strategic systems and weapons would not. We’d be able to see where the missile boosted up from within seconds of it’s launch, and that data would be preserved. So would our deployed SSBN force.

Not disagreeing with your damage assessment to the civilian infrastructure, but only with the premise that we wouldn’t know of whence the attack came.

respects,

Hmmm….

Fun pictures of suitcase nukes…you will want one in your backyard!

I could look up from the pages and see the locations the author was describing. It added considerably to the impact of the scene…

Doctor Zero on June 17, 2009 at 8:09 PM

And no doubt a little anxiety on the flight…