"Waiting for the Big One"

Geschrieben von Thymos am 20. September 2003 11:15:40:

"Waiting for the Big One"
by J. R. Nyquist


For two years the terrorists have spoken openly and privately about a final, devastating attack that would “paralyze” the United States. In November 2001, the Taliban’s Mullah Omar spoke to a journalist about the final destruction of America. A man of simple words, Omar did not say how America would be destroyed.

Last week Osama bin Laden re-issued his famous religious ruling (fatwa) on the mass killing of Americans: “The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilian and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it…. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God [who said], ‘fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,’ and ‘fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God.’"

While America relies on economic optimism to keep going, bin Laden relies on terrorist optimism. Exactly what is he planning? In 1999 terrorism expert Yossef Bodanksy quoted a senior Arab intelligence official as saying, “Osama bin Laden has acquired tactical nuclear weapons from the Islamic republics of Central Asia established after the collapse of the Soviet Union.” Recent postings on Islamist Internet sites, intercepted by intelligence experts, suggest that Islamic nuclear weapons may have been smuggled into the United States. A journalist who watches America’s borders recently dropped me a note: ”The fact something is about to go down is palpable. Many of my sources have gone into hibernation. It's been consistent that when that happens, something is going on.”

According to Bodansky, “Bin Laden’s emissaries paid the Chechins $30 million in cash and gave them two tons of Afghan heroin [approximately $600 million street value]” in exchange for nuclear weapons back in the 1990s. In his 1999 book, Bin Laden, the Man Who Declared War on America, Bodanksy wrote: “Evidence of the number of nuclear weapons purchased by the Chechens for bin Laden varies between ‘a few’ (Russian intelligence) to ‘more than twenty’ (conservative Arab intelligence services).”

Regardless of the weapons used, Osama’s re-issued fatwa tells us what to expect: “We -- with God's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youth, and soldiers to launch raids on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.”

On 5 June 2003 Attorney General John Ashcroft told the House Judiciary Committee: “We must be vigilant. We must be unrelenting. We must not forget that al Qaeda’s primary terrorist target is the United States of America. Even though recent attacks were overseas, the terrorist network is committed to killing innocent Americans, including women and children, by the thousands or even the millions if they can.”

Ashcroft then read the title of a fatwa issued by Saudi cleric Nazer bin Hamd al-Fahd: “The Legal Status of Using Weapons of Mass Destruction Against Infidels.” Ashcroft explained, “This fatwa lays out … religious arguments for the use of weapons of mass destruction against Americans, including women and children.”

Nazer bin Hamd’s fatwa reads as follows: “Weapons of mass destruction will kill the infidels on whom they fall, regardless of whether they are fighters, women or children. They will destroy and burn the land. The arguments for permissibility are many.”

This fatwa suggests – without a direct admission – that the Islamists have nuclear weapons. Here is a theological pronouncement by an Islamist cleric on the morality of nuclear attacks against civilian targets. The Muslim theologian in question says that massacring infidel noncombatants is “permissible.” Arguably, the Muslim world has nuclear weaponry on the brain. The Guardian (UK) is reporting that Saudi Arabia wants to acquire its own nuclear arsenal. Perhaps they are a bit behind the curve.

Whether terrorists currently possess nuclear weapons or not, people’s minds are being conditioned to accept the possibility of an Islamist nuclear assault. There are a number of ways to look at this. First, the Islamists may indeed have nuclear weapons in useable condition. Second, they might be exaggerating their capabilities. This exaggeration could serve the purposes of a third party (like North Korea, Russia or China) at the outset of a future military crisis. If U.S. leaders are conditioned to expect a nuclear attack from Arab terrorists, they might not be psychologically prepared to recognize a nuclear precursor attack initiated by highly trained commandos and military assets of other nuclear powers. The psychological possibility of successful misdirection opens a window of opportunity for strategic competitors interested in dealing a stealth-type blow against the United States, knowing the blow will be attributed to an Islamist terror network.

The fact that U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism remains weak, despite the improvements of Attorney General Ashcroft, must be fully appreciated in this context. Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen were not the only Russian spies burrowed deep in our intelligence hierarchy. Others, yet hidden in the highest ranks of the CIA and FBI, are doubtless in place. And then there is the testimony of veteran CIA officers like Robert Baer, who tell us that U.S. intelligence has been neutered by political correctness. There is another point, as well. The bane of drug trafficking has countless tentacles of corruption, and these have branched out into all directions – contaminating law enforcement, intelligence, government and business. The linkages between drug trafficking and terrorism deserve closer scrutiny. According to recent reports, several Mexican crime groups are now coordinated by the Russian mafia. Reports of this kind deserve careful consideration because we’ve heard similar reports from European sources. The statement given to David Remnick by Luciano Violente, the chairman of Italy’s parliamentary committee of inquiry into the mafia is relevant in this context. Voilente’s statement was used in Remnick’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, Lenin’s Tomb, and refers to the fact that Russia is now “a kind of strategic capital of organized crime from where all the major operations are launched.” Violente also told Remnick that Russia hosted crime summits to discuss money laundering, the sale of nuclear material and drug trafficking for the three main Italian mafias. Russia, said Violente, “has become a warehouse and clearing house for the drug market.”

More than one Soviet bloc defector has emphasized that Russian criminal groups are fronts for strategic operations. The same has also been said of Chinese and North Korean criminal groups that are known to operate in Mexico and Canada. The use of organized crime as a strategic tool is not some outlandish notion. It is fact, and the involvement of leading al Qaeda members in drug trafficking and money laundering should not surprise us.

The threat being built up in our minds, which is clearly a nuclear threat, emphasizes the role of Arabs and Muslims. Taking into account the fact that the nuclear and biological weapons of the Islamists are said to originate in “former” communist countries, supplied by characters like Victor Bout (under Moscow’s protection) or Chechen rebels previously trained by the GRU (like Shamil Basayev), we are left to ponder the potential blinds and double-blinds of what may be the ultimate maskirovka (defined as “preserving the secrecy of preparations for operations and campaigns, and also for the disorientation of the enemy with regard to actual intention and actions….”)

We are told that the Islamists probably have nuclear weapons. That is the story. Day by day, the idea filters into the media. We read Islamist statements on the Internet. Experts like Bodansky and others say that Arab and Russian intelligence services have confirmed these rumros. But if the terrorists have nuclear weapons then why haven’t they used them?

Several years ago, while talking to Abdul-Bari Atwan, editor of al-Quds al-Arabi, bin Laden said, “Military people are not unaware that preparations for major operations take a certain amount of time, unlike minor operations.”

In his 1999 book on bin Laden, Bodansky wrote: “Since early summer 1998 Islamist terrorists … under the command of Osama bin Laden and sponsored by the ISI [Pakistani intelligence] have been actively preparing for spectacular terrorist strikes using chemical, bacteriological, and perhaps radiological weapons in a well-equipped, fortified compound concealed near Qandahar.” According to Bodansky, “Viruses causing deadly diseases, such as Ebola and Salmonella, were procured [by al Qaeda] in Russia. Samples of botulinum biotoxin were acquired in the Czech Republic along with equipment for mass production.”

Bodansky also says the Islamists have prepared fungi for use against crops. They have procured toxins to poison drinking water. We are told that Arab specialists working for bin Laden were trained in places like Romania and Hungary (i.e., former Soviet bloc countries). An Islamic commander operating undercover in Europe reportedly stated, “These weapons [of mass destruction] have been purchased from East European states and the former Soviet Union.”

But the GRU and the KGB are the best intelligence services on the planet. They had FBI counter-intelligence penetrated for over a decade (see Robert Hanssen). They had the CIA moled out for two decades. Every CIA spy in Russia, during a period of several years, was caught and either turned or executed. In other words, the United States has been effectively blind with regard to secret doings in Russia while Russia has enjoyed a double set of eyes. First, Russia saw everything the U.S. could see. Second, it saw with its own eyes. To imagine that Islamic terrorists, supposedly the chief enemies of Russia in the 1980s, have purchased mass destruction technology from Russian/East Bloc sources without being caught, or without turning those weapons on Russia, is to suggest that the Russian services are incompetent or that the Islamists aren’t serious about wiping out a particular subset of infidels (a subset that killed more than a million Muslims in the 1980s). If the latter is correct, one has to ask why this has come about?

Bodansky has claimed that bin Laden wants to use “former” Soviet SPETSNAZ troops to carry out nuclear strikes against the United States. So we are left with the thought that even the men who detonate the bombs, will either be Russians or trained by Russian. This is most curious, and it deserves to be kept in mind whenever a major terrorist assault on America is discussed.

For several years our minds have been conditioned to a new enemy, even as we’ve been conditioned to believe that our old enemy is a reliable friend and partner. The new enemy’s links to the old enemy are ambiguous, masked by criminal intermediaries. America’s leaders are not paying sufficient attention to this. The new enemy is to be our focus. The old enemy, meanwhile, escapes suspicion. We are told to expect a mass destruction attack involving “old” Soviet bloc weapons carried about by “former” Soviet personnel on behalf of a handful of Islamists hiding in remote caves.

In considering the plausibility of this scenario we need to look at the big picture. While the United States remains fixated on the terror threat, Latin America is falling to closet communists like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Ecuador’s Lucio Gutierrez and Brazil’s Lula da Silva. While the United States has moved against terror-supporting states in Afghanistan and Iraq, Europe has begun to shift closer to Russia. Again, one ought to be suspicious. One ought to consider the possibility that we are being “played.”

In the event of a nuclear terror strike against America we are left with one assumption. It is the assumption that Osama bin Laden will be the perpetrator. We would like to assume that the bombs, even if smuggled by Russian gangsters, are al Qaeda’s bombs.

Is our approach to the war on terror naïve?




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