At 15:45 05-03-01 -0500, John D. Giorgis wrote:
>At 05:22 PM 3/4/01 +0100, J. van Baardwijk wrote:
> >>A ship is possible - but in many ways is much more problematic than an
> >>ICBM. With a ship, you need a loyal *and* suicidal crew.
> >
> >That may not be that big a problem, as long as your followers are fanatical
> >enough.
>
>Unfortunately, we have not yet invented the "fanatacism" detector.
As the afternoon's events in California have shown, we haven't even
invented the "disgruntled loner schoolboy" detector.
> Thus,
>a certain amount of trust is involved. Usually, volunteers for suicide
>missions are often drummed up in a fit of nationalistic/patriotic/religious
>fervor. Maintaining that fervor for a weeks-long voyage would be very
>difficult, and would run the serious risk of your fanatics defecting and
>taking your bomb with them. The same is true to a lessor extent for
>taking the bomb in a suitcase over an airplane (to say nothing of the
>intensive security measures involved.) In both cases, you also have to
>hope that you have not been infiltrated with a spy of some sort - as the
>transportation involved necessarily creates a window for counter-terrorism
>interference.
The most obvious way to get it here is to drive it across the border from
Mexico, as numerous drug dealers do every day. From south
Texas/Arizona/California, two or three guys in a car with a suitcase nuke
in the trunk can take turns driving and be in Washington, D.C. or New York
City or anywhere else in the contiguous US within two or three days at the
most. (Again, as done every day by drug dealers.)
And who needs suicidal fanatics? Park the car in any parking garage in
Washington (or other target city), set the timer for 24 hours, lock the
car, walk to the street, catch a cab to the airport, and be on the other
side of the world when the bomb goes off. The odds of the car being opened
and the bomb found (except possibly by a car thief looking for valuables to
steal and pawn for drug money) are so low as to be nonexistent.
>The truth be told, there is nothing like killing millions of people with
>the press of a button for sheer eficiency, risk-assessment, and
>cost-advantage.
>
>This is not to say that the USA will never be threatened by a suitcase nuke
>shipped by boat or plane. All I am saying is that if I wanted to nuke
>the USA - I *know* what method of delivery that I would choose.
Build it in your own back yard, as you are already in the USA? ;-)
>You know, I find it positively *AMAZING* that so many gun-control-loving
>liberals can be making arguments like this. After all, banning guns won't
>prevent murder by knife - yet you're completely unconcerned by that.....
>and somehow the argument that a missile defence won't stop nuclear
>weapon-strike-by-boat is incredilby persuasive.
>
> >Can you give us a summary of that debate?
>
>Yes, Colin Powell has suggested replacing the current economic sanctions
>with a set of "smart sanctions" - covering only products with a clear
>military purpose and boosted enforcement of said sanctions.
Would they be any more enforceable that the current sanctions? After all,
_someone_ is dealing with Saddam Hussein, buying oil and selling him stuff
he wants in violation of the sanctions. How do we deal with _that_ country
or company that is disregarding the sanctions, except by declaring war on
them? (For simplicity, I'm leaving out the step of declaring sanctions
against "Country X" which is trading with Iraq, since if the price is
right, "Country Y" will come along and either trade with Country X who will
continue to trade with Iraq, or Country Y will trade directly with Iraq, so
we declare sanctions against Country Y, then Country Z comes along . . . so
ultimately sanctions don't work if someone thinks there's enough profit to
be made in getting around them, so then what?)
-- Ronn! :)
