U.S. To Suffer Biological, Nuclear Terrorist Attack Before 2013

Posted In: Anti-Americanism, Politicians, Terrorism, U.S. Government

Seeing that we’re so loved by the rest of the world, the following isn’t too surprising. From FOX News earlier today:

Terrorists are likely to attack the United States using nuclear or more likely biological weapons before 2013, reports a bipartisan commission in a study being briefed Tuesday to Vice President-elect Joe Biden.

It suggests the Obama administration bolster efforts to counter and prepare for germ warfare by terrorists…

The commission believes biological weapons are more likely to be obtained and used before nuclear or radioactive weapons because nuclear facilities are more carefully guarded. Civilian laboratories with potentially dangerous pathogens abound, however, and could easily be compromised.

“The biological threat is greater than the nuclear; the acquisition of deadly pathogens, and their weaponization and dissemination in aerosol form, would entail fewer technical hurdles than the theft or production of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium and its assembly into an improvised nuclear device,” states the report.

It notes that the U.S. government’s counterproliferation activities have been geared toward preventing nuclear terrorism. The commission recommends the prevention of biological terrorism be made a higher priority.

FOX News staff added that terrorists still don’t have the technical prowess to make WMDs. From the piece:

The report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, led by former Sens. Bob Graham of Florida and Jim Talent of Missouri, acknowledges that terrorist groups still lack the needed scientific and technical ability to make weapons out of pathogens or nuclear bombs.

“Still lack the needed scientific and technical ability.” Rubbish. Folks, telling that to the American people is like telling American soldiers in Word War 2 that their Japanese counterparts couldn’t shoot straight because of the shape of their eyes. Ever heard of the “Nth Country Experiment”? According to Graham T. Allison, Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, in his book Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, in 1964 U.S. government scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the nation’s premier nuclear weapons design labs, wanted to see if a nuclear weapon could be designed by a few individuals without access to classified information. In the ensuing experiment, two recent Ph.D. students were chosen, precisely for their lack of knowledge of nuclear physics. One of the students even admitted to having only a high-school level understanding of nuclear fission. Using the scientific literature available during that time, the two young men researched nuclear fission, the shaping of conventional explosives, and even dug up charts and data from the first Los Alamos experiments. The resulting document, which included details on what materials were required and how to build the bomb, was turned over to nuclear weapons experts at Livermore. Their conclusion? If built, the proposed device, which was small enough to be transported in a cargo container or van, would not only work, but would explode with a force equal to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War Two…

A copy of the report (in .pdf format) of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism can be accessed on the FOX News website here.

Sources:

“Nuclear or Bioterror Attack on U.S. Likely by 2013, Panel Warns”
FOX News, December 2, 2008

Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe
Graham T. Allison, 2004

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