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| Zubaydah spills 4th of July threat |
| 2002-05-13 |
| In a major Washington Times article, Bill Gertz says that information provided by Abu Zubaydah indicates al-Qaeda thugs within the country are planning a July 4th hit on a nuclear power plant, possibly Three Mile Island. Other reports include the Bad Guys planning an attack within the U.S. using a "dirty" bomb. The nuclear plant attack was originally planned for May 1st, but the date slipped for unknown reasons. The "dirty bomb" cell consists of an American and an African national. The reliability of the information is open to question; despite Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's contention that we "control" Zubaydah, it is expected that he will continue to provide as much disinformation as he can. The more demonstrably spurious information he provides, the more he dilutes the reliability of the solid information he gives. It's kind of like intentionally crying "Wolf!" The "dirty bomb" attacks and the nuclear plant attacks would be of propaganda value to the Bad Guys, but casualties would probably be much lower than those that would result from a bomb in a pizza joint in a good-sized American mall. What's to the Bad Guys' advantage is that the certainty that such things are coming our way have faded with the passage of time since 9-11 and we're reverting to type, bickering among ourselves over nonessentials and focusing attention on Anna Kournikova's bosom or Condit's missing mistress. If the casualties are lower than they were in the 9-11 attack, public reaction won't be as strong, and it will be still less strong in the wake of the attack after that one. Eventually, if they're serious and their base organization's not thoroughly broken, the idea will be to get us used to occasional attacks, which can then be gradually escalated as we start to grow our own "Islamic Liberation Front." We don't need Abu Zubaydah to tell us that. What we need from Abu is who does what within al-Qaeda, where the money comes from, and who the Learned Elders of Islam behind the movement are. Then we need to shut down the money and ruthlessly — preferably painfully — kill all the Elders and all the al-Qaeda controllers we can lay hands on. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |