Experts: Suitcase Nuke Not Likely Scenario

Excerpt UK Guardian report "Suitcase Nukes Said Unlikely to Exist ":

Members of Congress have warned about the dangers of suitcase nuclear weapons. Hollywood has made television shows and movies about them. Even the Federal Emergency Management Agency has alerted Americans to a threat - information the White House includes on its Web site.

But government experts and intelligence officials say such a threat gets vastly more attention than it deserves. These officials said a true suitcase nuke would be highly complex to produce, require significant upkeep and cost a small fortune.

Counterproliferation authorities do not completely rule out the possibility that these portable devices once existed. But they do not think the threat remains.

``The suitcase nuke is an exciting topic that really lends itself to movies,'' said Vahid Majidi, the assistant director of the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. ``No one has been able to truly identify the existence of these devices.''

Majidi and other government officials say the real threat is from a terrorist who does not care about the size of his nuclear detonation and is willing to improvise, using a less deadly and sophisticated device assembled from stolen or black-market nuclear material.

Yet Hollywood has seized on the threat. For example, the Fox thriller ``24'' devoted its entire last season to Jack Bauer's hunt for suitcase nukes in Los Angeles.

Oh so that's where they got the idea that LA was being threatened by terrorists.  Lil' Bushie must have seen it on TV. 

Lets imagine that they keep all those kinds of conversations on tape somewhere, and that they'd actually let me transcribe it here: 

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 

Bush: "Gol durn it!  Lookee there. Them terraists are gonna blow up the Liberty Tower in L.A. with a suitcase bomb."

Cheney:  "Well, maybe we'd better say they're going to blow up a shopping mall or LAX.  That building is actually called the "Library Tower" -- Everyone knows no one goes to the library anymore. We can't work up much fear over a few thousand books."

Bush: People don' go to the lieburry any more?  How's Laura gonna support me when I have to leave this big old house? 

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 

Read rest at source.

Here's a good part though: 

Curt Weldon, a GOP representative from Pennsylvania who lost his seat in 2006... was known for carrying around a mock-up of a suitcase nuke made with a briefcase, foil and a pipe. But it was nowhere near the weight of an actual atomic device.

Yep, that was Representative Weldon who also co-sponsored the Universal Military Training and Service Act of 2001 in December of that year.  He dropped out of the co-sponsorhsip in the spring of 2002. Another co-sponsor was added, but I forget which Republican it was. Now retired representative Nick Smith was the primary sponsor. (Search Thomas.loc.gov "107th Congress" for H.R.3598 or on "enlistment" or the actual title of the bill -- in bold above. Thomas search results are temporary, and asking for the pdf file will get you the wrong one now that the system is so screwed up.)  The GOP has spent the years since 2001 claiming that Democratic Congressionals are the only ones who have ever talked about starting a military draft. But, in addition to the Smith-Weldon bill, the Bush administration ordered the Selective Service System 2004 to make sure it could start a draft within 75 days if so ordered.  The SSS offered its own ideas, saying a draft should consist of both male and females from the age of 18 to the age of 35 with no exemptions or deferments for post high school education.)

Weldon also was the guy who was pushing the AbleDanger lies that said  Atta was known to be in the US during the Clinton administration.  The case was closed when the people who supposedly saw the evidence stopped talking to investigators.   There comes a times in an investigation that it gets serious, and if you keep telling lies after that you're committing a felony.  I imagine that's when Weldon's buddies  stopped their charade though I don't know the particulars.

tags: suitcase nuke  terrorism  nuclear arms  draft  curt weldon  

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