At 06:12 PM 3/25/03 -0500, John Kelsey wrote: >At 04:37 AM 3/25/03 +0100, Lucky Green wrote: >... >>If any terrorists had nukes, why have they not used them so far? > >Suppose you only have one, it was really hard to get, and you're not sure >how much of your US network has been turned, or at least placed under heavy >surveilance? Maybe you wait until you are really sure you can succeed >before you use it.
You're not even sure whether it works well, either. (Note that even a completely subcritical dud will still be a dispersal device unless they seriously overbuild a U gun-type device.) >Alternatively, we have no way of knowing how often terrorists have tried to >use nukes, but been stopped one way or another. Maybe the Russians sold >them very convincing duds. Um, several times, in fact. "Look Abdul, it clicks! Must be fissile.." There's a technically incompetent but well financed jihadist born every minute. (Its the competent ones you want to worry about.) Maybe the FBI caught them and disarmed the >bombs before they went off. And they didn't claim any credit? This doesn't jibe with the puffery one observes. >And for a third alternative, it's quite possible (I don't know how likely) >that one or more groups have smuggled nukes into the US, planted them in US >cities, and offered proof to the US government, as a way of establishing a >nuclear deterrent. (C.f. Ross Anderson's "Guy Fawkes Protocol.") But they've *already* declared their goals in numerous fatwas by now, what do you want, a UN resolution? And deterrent type solutions haven't worked. The US probably increased its presence in the land of Mecca since the first WTC attack. Al Q's m.o. is simply to make the expected future cost of empire too high. This future expectation is produced by current actions. So, its preferable that Americans think "they had one, they can get another" (while viewing the Detroit Crater from the observation platform), instead of "supposedly (according to some idiot official who says we're on code Cerenkov Blue) there's a nuculear geezmo in some city". Besides, if you announce, you are toast. >There are pretty obvious reasons why the US government might not announce >either of the last two cases, and why the terrorist group of your choice >wouldn't announce "we have a bomb" until they had the thing planted where >they wanted it. Again, the operational risks with extortion, traced communications, the faith-based motivations and psyop saavy of Al Q indicate Use It or Lose It. "If you've got 'em, smoke 'em" as they say. --- "He listened patiently to my explanation of how I now believed a hydrogen bomb should be constructed, but he seemed unenthusiastic about what I had to say and preoccupied with other thoughts. After I left his office, I found to my considerable dismay that the fly to my trousers had been unzipped." E. Teller p 317 Memoirs
