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2004-11-22 Terror Networks & Islam

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Posted by tipper 2004-11-22 12:06:54 AM|| || Front Page|| [4 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 America should put the word out now : Biologicals in New York = Mecca glows for the next 10,000 years.

Posted by Les Nessman 2004-11-22 12:48:29 AM|| 2004-11-22 12:48:29 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Why only Mecca? I think Amman, Damascus, Tehran, Cairo, and Riyadh should be turned into parking lots. After all if Allah had not willed it they wouldn't be possible parking lots.

Posted by Thomas J. Jackson 2004-11-22 1:44:36 AM|| 2004-11-22 1:44:36 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 America should put the word out now : Biologicals in New York = Mecca glows for the next 10,000 years.

Close, but no cigar, Les. We need to reserve our atomic strikes for retaliation against nuclear terrorism. Any chembio attacks on western cities should result in Medina (and/or Mecca) being contaminated with the identical same pathogen or toxin immediately before the haj.

"Ooooh, sorry guys, no pilgrimage this year. I guess your fanatic brethern really spoiled the party for you. Maybe you need to consider doing something about purging them from your ranks."

Another similar strike results in both shrines being contaminated right before the haj.

Yet another strike and the shrines stay contaminated on a 24-7-365 basis until there are fifteen successive calendar months free from Islamist atrocities. All cleanup costs would be borne by the Islamic church. Let them experience the consequences of inadequately condemning terrorism.

Retaliation in kind will best demonstrate to all Islam how fraught with danger their dalliance with terrorism is. One nuclear terrorist attack and Medina is a glowing sheet of glass. I doubt another strike would happen if they realized that Mecca was next. This policy needs to be openly announced and signed on by the non-Muslim world.

I still have to wonder if it might be better to simply take both shrines by military action and hold them hostage against all future Islamist terror atrocities. Both shrines would become the ultimate "flypaper" for jihadis and we could establish a splendid kill zone perimeter around each of the locations. Land mines, IR pointed automatic rifles and other anti-personnel ordnance could really thin out the ranks of international terrorism and any other Islamic fanatics who felt compelled to liberate their holy sites.

Just a thought.

Posted by Zenster 2004-11-22 1:54:41 AM|| 2004-11-22 1:54:41 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 Z, slightly OT but your suggestion for walling off Mecca and Medina might also be a good recipe for the Sunni cities of Iraq.

Posted by V is for Victory 2004-11-22 7:03:56 AM|| 2004-11-22 7:03:56 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 I may be missing something here, but I thought the US had disavowed Bio and Chemical weapons, having stated that an attack using WMD (NBC) will be responded to by using the WMD the US has left - ie Nukes.

Having said that, Zensters' ideas do seem to have some mileage in them...

Posted by Tony (UK) 2004-11-22 9:09:34 AM|| 2004-11-22 9:09:34 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 I think that's the kind of promise to which one is not bound after the other guy breaks it.

Personally, I'd prefer a covert infestation during the nest high pilgrimage season that does not mainifest symptoms until the carier has returned home and spread it there.

Posted by Mrs. Davis 2004-11-22 9:22:05 AM|| 2004-11-22 9:22:05 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Don't want to spoil the fun but Gunaratna is a very questionable 'expert'. He's an expert on the Tamil Tigers but he just jumped on the middle east bandwagon, proclaimed himself an expert but there's probably Rantburgers out there like Fred who know more than Rohan.

Posted by Anon1 2004-11-22 10:03:01 AM|| 2004-11-22 10:03:01 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 If we were to retaliate with an attack on Mecca, we would be admitting that the enemy is not merely Islamic extremism, but Islam itself. Therefore, why hit just one city? Hit them all.

Posted by BH 2004-11-22 10:10:51 AM|| 2004-11-22 10:10:51 AM|| Front Page Top

#9 Bio against people is terribly overrated. Production isn't the problem, it's dispersal. The only kind of agents that are effective are pulmonary diseases, and then only in situations where people are crowded together and have no public health care system. Ironically (new information), even most pulmonary infections are spread *not* by coughing and sneezing, but by touch--that is, hand contact or touching something an infected person has touched. If you frequently wash your hands, or better yet, use Purell, your chance of even getting the #1 lethal bio threat, influenza, drops radically. (Flu kills between 30-50,000 Americans every year.) Other than that, it is next to impossible to determine if a bio attack has occurred, unless you catch them in the act--so retaliation is pretty futile.

Posted by Anonymoose 2004-11-22 10:36:12 AM|| 2004-11-22 10:36:12 AM|| Front Page Top

#10 Washing your hands well five times a day reduces your chance of getting the flu 80%.

Bio is the WMD that would be the most difficult to deliver. Too many points of failure. If you die before reaching your target, you don't get the virgins. And... you must ensure that your bio agent survives the trip from Nowherestan. And... you get the idea.

American medicine deals with epidemics all the time. West Nile, flu, HIV, and so on. Heck, unless the disease is uncommon, we might not even know it was a WMD attack.

Posted by Chuck Simmins 2004-11-22 11:01:59 AM|| [http://blog.simmins.org] 2004-11-22 11:01:59 AM|| Front Page Top

#11 Bio against people is terribly overrated.

Hmmmmm.... Let's see. Quarter cup of (non-lethal) anthrax killed 5 people, shut down half a dozen buildings (are they open YET?), cost untold $$$ and disrupted government. Good thing it wasn't a suitcase full of the lethal kind.

Posted by Rawsnacks 2004-11-22 11:02:07 AM|| 2004-11-22 11:02:07 AM|| Front Page Top

#12 Rawsnacks, those attacks (2) represent the only successful anthrax attacks out of more than a handful of attempts. The Aum in Japan failed more than once, for example.

It also proved that bio WMD may not be as deadly as the "experts" state.

Posted by Chuck Simmins 2004-11-22 12:01:30 PM|| [http://blog.simmins.org] 2004-11-22 12:01:30 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 Did I mention that the anthrax was not even dispersed? The Aum failed because they didn't have the goods. The 2001 people had the goods.

We're lucky it wasn't an antibiotic resistant strain... how many people would have died?

What was proved is a capability. What was proved is that the anthrax is here.

Posted by Rawsnacks 2004-11-22 2:52:33 PM|| 2004-11-22 2:52:33 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 Do some research on how effective smallpox was against Indian tribes and South-sea islanders. Nobody gets a smallpox vaccination any more, but there are dozens of strains of weapons-grade smallpox available. It's easy to spread, and some of the more virulent strains are resistant to the most common antibiotics. Of course, the person carrying the stuff into the States would most likely be the first to succumb to it, but even if it didn't kill anybody, a rapidly-spreading infection of that kind could incapacitate several tens of thousands of people. That would be an economic blow, if nothing else.

We're dealing with people who will do ANYTHING. It's best not to put on blinders, or think something is impossible. Nothing is truly impossible for people willing enough to commit themselves to anything that will harm us or our economy.

Posted by Old Patriot 2004-11-22 6:46:33 PM|| [http://users.codenet.net/mweather/default.htm] 2004-11-22 6:46:33 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 I don't know about you, but when I see Hawk-eye award winner Les Nessman reporting prior to Thanksgiving, I get very nervous, a fear that is now almost 34 years old.

Posted by Whipper-In Barbie 2004-11-22 7:07:28 PM|| 2004-11-22 7:07:28 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 As a person of interest, I can say without qualification that biological weapons are WAY overrated

Posted by Stephen Hatfill 2004-11-22 7:30:55 PM|| 2004-11-22 7:30:55 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 Any attack is not good obviously but I wonder how much damage a biological attack would really do. I tend to think that a car bomb driven into a crowded mall during Christmas shopping scares me a lot more and seems a lot more likely.

Posted by BillH 2004-11-22 7:31:50 PM|| [http://www.worldwar4.net] 2004-11-22 7:31:50 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 Someone, maybe Zenster, noted that coordinated, simultaneous small arms attacks on many different large suburban malls could wreak as much havoc as most of the plausible or probably wmd scenarios.

Posted by lex 2004-11-22 7:39:47 PM|| 2004-11-22 7:39:47 PM|| Front Page Top

#19 Bio against people is terribly overrated. Depends on the agent. I lived thru SARS in Singapore and saw how one infected person who took a 30 minute taxi ride nearly brought a modern medical system to its knees.

Posted by phil_b 2004-11-22 7:46:47 PM|| 2004-11-22 7:46:47 PM|| Front Page Top

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