[A-List] Strategy of tension

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It's no wonder our leaders worry about "dirty" bombs. They and their
predecessors have manufactured most of them, and have had plenty of time
to study the results of using depleted uranium ordnance in both Iraq and
Kosovo.

Anthrax having served its purpose, now we can ratchet up the tension
with some alarmism about suitcase bombs. BTW, has anyone here ever seen
the Sean Connery 1982 movie, "Wrong is Right", titled "The Man with the
Deadly Lens" in Britain? It's uncannily close to what is going on now.
Supposedly a satire on the relationship between US news media and
politics, it centres on events in a fictional North African state
whereby the CIA engineers the assassination of the "moderate" king in
order to stop a possible alliance with the "extremists" who have been
fighting a civil war against him until now. Then it's a question of how
the US president can legitimately declare war on that country without
losing face (and an election, more importantly) because of being
uncovered as the assassin in the first place (a corner engineered for
him by the CIA). This is achieved by the "discovery" and disarming of
two suitcase atom bombs hanging from a flagpole in New York. War is
declared, and the president wins the election. If you find a copy in the
rental store, check it out. If anything it's more believable than
anything you're likely to be told by Donald Rumsfeld. Not that this
would be difficult, of course.

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West fears terrorist 'dirty' bomb 

IAN BRUCE
The Herald, 2 November 2001

      THE ultimate nightmare for security services
      throughout the West is a terrorist "dirty" bomb
      made from high-grade nuclear waste packed
      around home-made explosives. 

      Packed in the back of a van parked on the top
      storey of a high-rise car park in a city centre, it
      could inflict tens of thousands of casualties,
      some a generation away from the initial blast as
      a result of cancers and birth defects.

      The worst-case scenario, depending on wind
      speed and direction, power of the blast and
      materials used, could render parts of a city
      uninhabitable for the next century or two.

      All of it would be contingent on whether or not it
      rained within hours of the detonation. A decent
      shower would bring the most damaging
      radioactive particles rapidly to earth and limit
      the worst of the contamination.

      The Royal Navy's Clyde submarine base was
      established on the principle of "Faslane
      weather", an anchorage where it rained on a
      daily basis more often than not. It was a major
      unstated factor in the selection of Faslane as the
      home port for Britain's nuc-lear deterrent force.

      While there was virtually no risk of an atomic
      explosion, the average rainfall would, hopefully,
      diminish the aftermath of an accidental release
      of radioactive material. The fact that it also gave
      a ready access to the sea for Polaris missile
      boats was a bonus.

      Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network
      has been actively seeking nuclear capability
      since the early 1990s.

      Its first attempts focused on the purchase of a
      ready-made warhead in the chaos of the Soviet
      Union's fragmentation. Even Moscow is still
      unsure whether it has a full inventory of the
      atomic weapons it deployed in the tens of
      thousands during the Cold War.

      There are unsubstantiated rumours that al
      Qaeda managed to buy two "backpack" nuclear
      demolition charges, weapons designed to be
      used by the Spetznaz, the Soviet equivalent of
      the SAS, behind Nato lines in the 1980s.

      But intelligence sources say that, if bin Laden
      has the warheads, then he lacks the enabling
      codes to detonate them. If he had them, then he
      would have used one or both to destroy New
      York's Trade Towers instead of relying on a
      complex hijack plan and the nerve of kamikaze
      pilots.

      Far more alarming and pos-sible is the
      adaptation of relatively easily-available nuclear
      material to a makeshift "dirty" bomb.

      According to the International Atomic Energy
      Authority, there have been 175 cases of illegal
      trafficking in nuclear material, and 201 cases of
      trafficking in medical and industrial radio-active
      waste since 1993.

      Only 18 of these cases have involved small
      amounts of highly enriched uranium or
      plutonium, the basic component of nuclear
      weapons. But 13 have happened in the last
      year.

      It takes 50lbs of specially treated uranium or
      18lbs of plutonium to form the core of a bomb,
      but the process to convert it from radioactive
      mass to a warhead and then deliver that
      warhead to a specific target, is beyond the
      means of most states, never mind terrorist
      organisations.

      The cheaper option is to obtain the most
      radioactive material which can be stolen or
      bought on the black market: the waste from the
      hundreds of nuclear power stations dotted
      around the world.

      With a few kilos of the mixed plutonium and
      uranium, or better still caesium-137, a
      substance more toxic than Ebola virus and more
      enduring than diamonds, the ultimate terrorist
      would have the lethal coating for his poor man's
      atomic bomb.

      Most terrorist groups have access to
      commercial or military plastic explosives. The
      IRA used to make its bigger vehicle bombs from
      "Co-op mix", a combination of weedkiller, sugar,
      diesel, and various other ingredients found in
      most kitchens and garden huts.

      The trick with a dirty nuclear release is to trigger
      it upwind of the target area on a day when the
      breeze will spread the contamination as widely
      as possible.

      The accidental reactor meltdown and release of
      a windblown plume at Chernobyl in 1986
      polluted almost 3000 square miles of the
      Ukraine and deposited dangerous levels of
      radioactivity across most of northern and
      western Europe.

      There have been 11,000 admitted cases of
      thyroid cancer in Ukraine and Belarus alone
      since then. Sheep in Wales are still being
      checked quietly for contamination, 15 years
      after the event.

Full article at:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/2-11-19101-0-49-12.html

Michael Keaney
Mercuria Business School
Martinlaaksontie 36
01620 Vantaa
Finland

michael.keaney@xxxxxx