Is this a bluff? And he is saying he will use them ONLY if we use them. Think someone has been tightening the screws on him a bit?

[url]http://in.news.yahoo.com/011109/64/18kh7.html[/url]

Aviator  [img]www.milpubs.com/aviator.gif[/img]

Not only does he have nukes, he also shot down a helicopter, a B52, and has taken several hundred SF types prisoner. I heard it on CNN!!

He may or may not have fissionable material (weapons grade uranium or plutonium) sourced from the old Soviet Union or Iraq, or perhaps he just has radioactive materials. Or, He may have an entire weapon. What he most likely does not have is the ability to initiate a fission reaction, for a number of reasons. Not that I want 5 pounds of plutonium-239 aerosolized anywhere.

One question, is Al-Qaeda at all constrained from using WoMD? Insight anyone?

Luck
Alac

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.
- George Orwell

I think its a bluff. Don't you think that if he had nukes he would have already used them?

If he has the ability to obtain a nuke, then surely he would have the ability to smuggle it into the United States. After that, he would have his choice of targets to obliterate. The could have blown it up in the middle of Pennsylvania Ave.

I don't believe him. Plus, who cares if they say they will retaliate with nukes if we use them? If it gets that far who really believes that there will be anybody left to set it off after we are finished?

Michael

I think he has them and unfortunately will use them. I then hope that we will wade through all the sissy candy assed liberals whinning objections and use our nukes and be done with that piece of $hit FOREVER. Unlike Castro and Hussein the key word here is FOREVER.

I always said they should be "nuked".

I feel these boys have always been full of crap and there days are numbered.

[img]http://www.commspeed.net/jmurray/images/mushroom_cloud.gif[/img]

The man says he has nukes:
I say we call his bluff !!!!!

Jay
Arizona

IMHO If he did have them he would have used them already and would not have had to dream up a plan like highjacking commercial airliners and using them as bombs. I'm sure he'd love to have them now and is doing eveything he can to get his hands on one but I think that window of opportunity is now closed. Besides if he did have a nuke would he really be stupid enough to tell us about it? What would he have to gain by that? Make us want to kill the POS more? Scare us? Anyone dumb enough to believe a word that murderer says is already scared.

Say you are a bank robber, things go bad for you during one of your heists.  You lock the doors and tell the LEO's on the phone that you are armed to the teeth and they will never take you alive.  Do the LEO's have an obligation to take your threat seriously, and take you out the first time you pass a window?  Or should they wait and see if you start tossing dead hostages throguh the door?

I think right about now Bin Laden is crapping his panties.  The Taliban was routed from Mazar-e-Sharif by a smaller force and they are now in the open and getting nailed by tac air.  Norther Alliance says they could be in Kabul in a few days.  Which means they will own most of the urban population over the winter plus have the road network to support the population with food.  One report this morning is that the NA is getting close to Herat in NW Afganistan too.  If they can get the hat-trick before the month is over it will be a bad winter for Bin Laden and the Taliban!

Bin Laden screwed up--he should have totally defeated the Northern Alliance before he pulled the Sept. 11 attacks.  Rule #1 in war: never open a two-front war, unless you are the USA!

GunLvr

I think it's a moot point, myself.  The world
will turn on us big time if we initiate a
nuclear attack.  We're kicking his ass right
now, slowly and systematically, and we don't
need to go there to win.

If he were crazy enough to attack us with
a dirty bomb, he and the rest of the world
all know the gloves come off.  Attack us like
that, we will respond a hundred fold.  (Or maybe
10,000 fold????)

So a guy sneaky enough to plan an attack using airliners is gonna tip his hand about his possession of the ultimate super weapon?  If I were in his shoes, and possessed nukes, it would be aa ace-in-the-hole sorta thing. I say his claim is BULLSHIT!

I don't think that Bin Laden has a fully functioning fission bomb, which is quite difficult to make, despite what people think.  The trick is to very precisely machine the uranium or plutonium hemispheres, and then surround them with conventional explosives which are triggered with exquisite precision.  Exquisite precision means that all the explosives have to simultaneously detonate within microseconds of each other.  If they don't, you just have a nasty blast, but fission does not occur.

I would not be surprised if Bin Laden has obtained some quantity of uranium, or plutonium, and is calling that his nuclear bomb.  He could detonate it in a populated area and cause a lot of damage and radioactive pollution, perhaps rendering the area unlivable for human beings.  (Imagine such a device polluting Manhattan Island for instance).

Bin Laden's claim is either very good news or very bad news. It's very good news if  he's been reduced to idle boasting because that's all he can do. It's very bad news if, well it's obvious why it may be bad news.

Ckapsl dead on once again;

One thing. Building one is tough - buying one may not be. The real question for the intelligence types is...DID THEY GET THE CODES.

I don’t think Al-Qaeda is concerned with as American retaliation as one might assume. Obviously it did not deter the attacks on the WTC. Al-Qaeda knew this was a gambit which would leave ultimately, one or the other destroyed. If they thought it would advance their aims they would do it. But Al-Qaeda risks alienating their Muslim base if they, say, vaporized a city, without rendering the United States helpless . The scale would be difficult to justify. Or perhaps the Islamic world would rejoice. Either outcome fails to produce enough benefits to outweigh the risk.

Al-Qaeda's political intent is to polarize Islam, whip up religious fervor and topple the secular Arab states in particular. The ultimate aim being to engage the West as a united Pan-Islamic state, and at the very least to replace the Western Hegemony as the preeminent world power. At best, subjugate the world under Muslim rule. Don’t think these jokers don’t dream about that.

So if a major U.S. city is gone in a flash, more than likely it would precipitate a  political crisis for Al-Qaeada and the Pan-Islamics.  However, if Al-Qaeda was seen as reacting to a nuclear attack, say on, Qandahar, or some tunnel complex the Russians could never reduce, especially once they’ve issued their warning to the U.S., well...

Hmm...might they have two?

Luck
Alac

Nukes? I know early on they said that he has radiation bombs. Nukes- We have more!

The only nukes that mother f'er has is the ones that we would drop on his ass!

Nah.

Why would he drop a couple of buildings if he could level the whole city?

If he had them, he would use them. Period.

Who cares?

He cant destroy the whole US with one Nuke, but if he used one on us we would get a free shot.  Russia and China wouldnt even TRY to stop us cause they hate Muslims too, and mutually assured destruction is as much a part of their nuclear deterrant as it is ours.

What they would probably do however is use "moral equivication" after the fact to justify the anhiallation of their own Muslim minorities in a new Holocaust.  And we would have to sit back and watch them commit genocide...

[url]http://www.msnbc.com/news/655528.asp?pne=msn[/url]

A little more on the subject.  

"The newspaper (Pakistani Frontier Post) quoted sources close to the investigation as saying that the agencies had “reached a conclusion that at least two briefcase nuclear weapons may have reached the US shores” and that U.S. officials were on high alert for the possibility that al-Qaida could strike in New York during this week’s U.N. General Assembly session."

Personally, I think he's full of crap.  He's afraid and has finally figured out that his number is almost up.

Kill Bin Laden
[50]

Bingo!

The two are not the same.



Nail.

Head.

Tactically and strategically, the time to use them was any time after Kabul was about to fall out of Taliban control.  It could still happen, and it's a possibility enough that the Mrs. and me spend 30 minutes one night discussing our own evac possibilities.  But overall, I'd say he doesn't have "detonation capability" and at most has material for a "dirty bomb."

Only time will tell. [:\]