(INTL) Why the U.S. will attack Iraq in April (must read)

[BB]

GOOD ARTICLE ON WHY BUSH IS TALKING NUKES. I have heard of Red Mercury. It is nasty stuff. This article bears out how dangerous the international scenario is right now. After reading this article I now believe we are in a situation akin to the Cuban missile crisis. I fear preemptive strikes by Russia, terrorists, and Iraq, BEFORE we attack Iraq.

"The Balance of Terror and the Red Mercury Nightmare" by J. R. Nyquist

On Thursday, March 21, WorldNetDaily posted an article from STRATFOR, a well-connected private intelligence firm. The title of the article was "Crisis looming between U.S., Russia." http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=26920 STRATFOR's article deals with CIA Director George Tenet's March 19 testimony before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. According to Tenet, Russia is hardly a reliable partner in the "war against terror." Instead, Russia is "the first choice of proliferant states seeking the most advanced technology and training," said Tenet.

What the CIA director could not say, and perhaps what makes President George W. Bush so desperately
eager to wipe out the regime of Saddam Hussein, is that Russia may have given red mercury fusion
technology to Saddam. According to one of my sources, Iraq possesses "s-megaton" micro-nuclear
warheads. These are softball-sized two-megaton fusion bombs triggered by an irradiated and compressed compound of mercury antimony oxide. This device doubles the nuclear yield with a hundredfold reduction of weight. Using heavy hydrogen instead of uranium or plutonium to fuel its explosive reaction, this hand-held nuclear weapon cannot be detected by U.S. sensors.

It should be acknowledged that CIA Director Tenet singled out Russia for a reason. Only Russia has compression technology in advance of America's. Only Russia has worked long and hard to develop a perfect fusion bomb (the U.S. having abandoned its own effort decades ago). And now American intelligence has evidence of something dire, something they don't want to tell us. According to STRATFOR, "A severe crisis between the two sides [America and Russia] may now be forming." As STRATFOR further points out, "Now the director of the CIA has named Russia as the key source of WMD proliferation."

Perhaps we are now in a position to understand what Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, meant when he said last fall that America would soon be destroyed. He did not say America would be crippled, or that America would be defeated. He said America would disappear.

When a suspect in the Danny Pearl kidnapping and murder case was being escorted by guards in Pakistan a couple of weeks ago, he reportedly shouted to the press, "Sell your dollars! Soon America will be gone."

What does Al Qaeda know that we don't? CIA Director Tenet was very clear when he spoke to the U.S. Senate committee last week. He holds Russia responsible for giving advanced mass destruction technology to Iraq. And Tenet evidently believes that Iraq is allied to Al Qaeda. As STRATFOR explained, "Tenet delivered a blunt message to Putin: The United States believes that WMD proliferation is official Russian policy." The Bush administration was offering a stern warning to Moscow. It must halt its technology transfers to rogue regimes or suffer the consequences. And what would those consequences be? STRATFOR claims that President Putin "faces the distinct possibility of attacks on Russian weapons facilities and the potential elimination of his country's nuclear capability."

This statement deserves further elaboration. But who dares to elaborate? Is America actually contemplating a nuclear strike on the Russian nuclear arsenal? Only a very desperate crisis would trigger such unthinkable verbiage out of our bloodless bean counters.

In fact, if STRATFOR's report is correct, the United States is holding Russia directly responsible for Saddam Hussien's future actions. And this should tell us, at the very least, that Saddam Hussein is a much more terrible threat than the general public has been led to believe. So terrible is the threat, that U.S. officials find it necessary to openly threaten Russia in order to reestablish the balance of terror in the wake of Moscow's secret connivance with Iraq.

The revelations of yet another respected intelligence firm, DEBKA File, dovetails with STRATFOR's information. According to DEBKA, the White House is seriously considering tactical nuclear strikes against Iraq. This drastic approach can only be explained - once again - by a dire, immediate and frightening Iraqi potential. If not for this, U.S. leaders would hardly expend precious political and diplomatically capital by pushing so aggressively for the eradication of Saddam's regime in Baghdad. According to intelligence sources close to DEBKA, [See article: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=26924 ] "The White House is considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons and planning the break-up of Iraq … in a broad military campaign set now for April."

And why the hurry? Surely, only a very grave threat would inspire such urgency in U.S. policy-makers. DEBKA confirms that the reason for the U.S. urgency has to do with Iraq's possession of nuclear warheads, though DEBKA does not confirm that these are "s-megaton" micro nuclear devices. Why the U.S. would be concerned with large, more cumbersome and detectable weapons is a question that readers will have to sort for themselves. According to DEBKA, the main reason for a nuclear blitzkrieg against Iraq in April would be to "locate nuclear devices believed to be in the possession of Saddam Hussein."

The idea would then be to destroy the weapons before they could be used to trigger a nuclear or biological holocaust. Judging by the tempo of U.S. moves, Iraq's nuclear capability will probably become effective some time after April 25. That is why, even though U.S. military authorities confess that we are unready to attack Iraq, an attack must go forward nonetheless.

U.S. officials are also said to be planning nuclear strikes that would eliminate the top Iraqi leadership, opening the way for the negotiated surrender of individual Iraqi divisions and the creation of a Kurdish state in the north.

DEBKA further alleges that Vice President Richard Cheney received intelligence during his recent Middle East trip that Iraq had already transferred nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda, along with weaponized smallpox. Cheney was supposedly told that some of these munitions may have been smuggled into the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Many will dismiss the claims of DEBKA, but according to Dr. Robert Morey, an Islam expert who predicted the Sept. 11 attacks, three small nuclear devices have been smuggled into the United States and are being held in reserve for future use. Speaking with the Assist News Service (ANS), Dr. Morey said: "I have Middle Eastern friends throughout the U.S. who continually feed me information as to what the terrorists are up to." [See article: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=26891 ]

Then comes the most curious and frightening story of them all, which may tie everything into one neat package. This story comes out of Canada and involves a U.S. citizen who has been granted political asylum by Ottawa in accordance with international law. The U.S. citizen in question is Delmart Edward Vreeland. [See article: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...path=News/News ] The United States government says that Vreeland is a petty criminal. But Vreeland identifies himself as a lieutenant with the Office of Naval Intelligence who defected to Canada in December 2000 after retrieving documents from Moscow. One of these documents, a communiqué from K. Hussaine of Iraq to V.Putin of Russia, discusses "the initial phase of our planned assault against the United States in September of 2001 and after." Because of these shocking revelations, Vreeland maintains that he cannot return to the United States because the Russian mafia would assassinate him and because an important American official would assure Vreeland's death or imprisonment upon his return.

The Russian document, in fact, refers to "our official in America" who can "assure" the desired results if security should be compromised. The document does not name the official in question, but Vreeland believes it is someone with great influence.

I interviewed Mr. Vreeland on Monday and reviewed a key document he allegedly retrieved from Moscow. The communiqué from K. Hussaine to V.Putin (referred to above) is dated June 13, 2000, and was used by Vreeland to successfully predict the Sept. 11 attack in a letter to Canadian prison authorities. The document, which names the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a nuclear power plant as the initial targets of Sept. 11, curiously describes these as "diversionary strikes" attributed to the work of "our brothers."

The real attack, says the Iraqi official, will involve the use of "new s-megaton mini satellite [guided] rocket[s]." This is a weapon that would be smuggled into the United States, and better resembles a small robot aircraft than a missile. The striking power of this satellite guided toy rocket is listed as two megatons.

The document says, "The shock wave from the air burst of our two megaton mini combined with its own reflection from the ground will form a blast wave of such power that everything will be destroyed … within 8 to 13 U.S. miles of ground zero." The document also refers to a top secret Russian stealth satellite termination system (called S.S.S.T.). According to Vreeland, this is a stealth orbital platform armed with clusters of electromagnetic pulse bombs capable of knocking out global communications and frying U.S. nuclear warheads leaving the Western Hemisphere.

If Vreeland's information is reliable, we might have a handle on why the United States is threatening Russia with nuclear strikes. Like a trapped animal the U.S. realizes the mistake it has made. Disarming after our alleged Cold War victory was an error. Now the U.S. must make terrible threats and take drastic action to restore the nuclear balance. To do this the United States must hold Russia directly responsible for
Russian-supported and Iraqi-directed nuclear terrorism against the American homeland. By doing this, and by mopping up Iraq, the United States might reestablish that same "balance of terror" that kept the peace during the Cold War.

Readers may ask, "Is red mercury fact or fiction?" U.S. officials have sometimes ridiculed red mercury as a hoax. But not former Russian Atomic Energy Minister Viktor Mikhailov, who once spoke of a new kind of bomb that could devastate "foreign territory" while carrying no risk of retaliation. During a Pravda interview almost a decade ago, Mikhailov described the existence of "little bombs" that "could appear by the year 2000." In 1993 General Y. Negin said that Russia had developed a special nuclear weapon, "in which a doubling of yield is achieved with a hundredfold reduction of weight compared to existing weapons."
American scientist Sam Cohen, inventor of the neutron bomb, pointed out in 1995 that such an increase in nuclear efficiency would only be possible if the Russians had developed a red mercury device.

Today the Russian Defense Ministry says red mercury doesn't exist. Western officials treat the subject dismissively. After all, Russian smugglers have created fake samples of red mercury, which have conveniently fallen into the hands of Western authorities. But Russian sources, derided as "questionable," continue to report that red mercury - first produced in 1965 at a nuclear research center outside Moscow - is currently being mass-produced at six secret sites in the Urals at a rate of 150 pounds per year.

United States officials would never admit that Russia had developed such a technology. Such an admission, after a decade of smug denials, would indicate incompetence and dereliction of duty in high places. It would indicate that U.S. strategic thinking has been blind, deaf and dumb. As any nuclear strategist might tell you: the development in Russia of a micro-nuclear fusion bomb would completely change the strategic nuclear balance. Undetectable from space, easy to deliver, such a device could not be tracked or counted by "national technical means." In addition, it would be the ultimate terrorist weapon.

Did Russia give Iraq red mercury fusion technology? Last week CIA Director George Tenet pointed his finger directly at Russia for a reason. The United States now seeks the annihilation of Saddam Hussein for a reason. Mullah Omar and the killers of Danny Pearl say that America will soon be gone - perhaps with reason.

© 2002 Jeffrey R. Nyquist
March 26, 2002

http://www.jrnyquist.com

[mt4design]

BB, this is horrific, shocking and entirely plausible, IMHO.

So many prophecies and signs point to the times we find ourselves in. The facts coming to light seem to confirm it.

Mike

[Kasota]

I think I need to buy more toilet paper...

[dreamseeer]

Aren't we still under the policy of absorbing a first strike before we retaliate?

What can I say after reading this but may God have mercy on our souls...

This is very very heavy for the heart to endure and it is so very close at hand.

[phoenix7of7]

I think I'm going to be SICK!



If any of this is true ... we're damned lucky to have President Bush/Cheney/Runsfield rather then gore and his limp-wristed ilk.

[mt4design]

dreamseer...very interesting observation regarding absobing a first strike

the nuclear position paper leaked recently to the press said flat out that that policy was no longer the case and listed 7 countries that we would strike if we were attacked with WMDs.

makes one go, hummmmm...

Mike

[zhuzhitsu]

If many of the assertations contained in the above article are true, then I don't see what good attacking Iraq will do. That will almost guarantee that the prepositioned nukes will be touched off. I am very curious as to what three city areas would be targeted for maximum disruption of America. NYC comes to mind, DC, thinking outside the box areas like Auburn Hills MI, with Chrysler HQ and tech center along with many other big time company HQ buildings = massive disruption of the economy. SCARY post indeed.

[dreamseeer]

L.A.

[mutter]

BB, thank you for posting this.

been looking for Russian overt action ever since 9-11....eveything is falling into place. only the exact timing is missing.

listening to a program on quail now that is talking about this saturday being 'the' day... so this is double frightening to me at the moment.

http://gcnlive.com/

i work continually to be strong in God`s name during the times ahead.

[Loon]

I vote for DC. Michigan just sent 150 guard to DC yesterday. They'll be stationed there for one year or more.

[Sassyone]

New York City, Miami Florida, Colorado Springs Colorado

[Tumbleweed]

Geez!!

BB, thanks for that! I sincerely hope that it
is simply another rumor being tossed about
(I keep saying that to myself while I change
my diaper!) I do believe that a nuclear
device will fall upon a nation again someday,
and that day may be soon, things looking as
they are! It has to happen in somebody's
lifetime. Dang, and I wanted to die of old age!

[BB]

I've read this article three times and edited it twice to tidy it up. It gets scarier each time I read it. We all know things are going on behind the scenes, but the Tenet testimony alone validates this article for me. I have talked to Nyquist. He is a very careful scholar. He is a political scientist who has studied Russia for most of his life. He would not put this together and publish it if he didn't feel it had substance.

In the meantime, I am going to focus on spiritual preparations on this forum for those who have faith. I need it and I'm certain so does everyone else. I've been reading and studying Revelation lately, all over again. One commentator calls it a manual on martyrdom. We must be prepared to die...

[dreamseeer]

Agree

[jed turtle]

BB- yes, very scary post. yes, be prepared to die, but hoping to live. that comes naturally afterall. just found this:

fair use etc.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2002Mar22.html

U.S. Nuclear Arms Stance Modified by Policy Study Preemptive Strike Becomes an Option
By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, March 23, 2002; Page A14
The Bush administration is working to codify the evolution of U.S. strategic nuclear doctrine from the Cold War policy of massive retaliation against the Soviet Union to a more flexible system that warns of a preemptive strike against hostile countries that threaten to use weapons of mass destruction.
The policy would give U.S. presidents the option of conducting a preemptive strike with precision-guided conventional bombs or nuclear weapons.
This system, which Pentagon planners call "offensive deterrence," would put an official end to the practice of assigning a set of fixed targets for the U.S. nuclear force, the vast majority of them in the former Soviet Union. It would replace it with a more flexible targeting scheme in which weapons could be aimed at states that threaten or use chemical, nuclear or biological arms against the United States or its allies.
Reflecting the U.S. approach, British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon told members of the House of Commons in London Wednesday that Britain was prepared to use its nuclear weapons to respond to a biological or chemical attack.
Details of the U.S. policy are contained in excerpts from the Pentagon's nuclear posture review, which was sent to Congress in January. The review, parts of which remain classified, is aimed at providing a blueprint for developing and using nuclear weapons and will serve as the basis for a new presidential decision directive. The last nuclear posture review was completed in 1994.
"Nuclear weapons will, of course, continue to play a vital role," the new review says. "However, they will be just part of the [offensive strategic force], integrated with new nonnuclear strategic capabilities that strengthen the credibility of our offensive deterrence."
The more flexible targeting system, called "adaptive planning," was first adopted by the Clinton administration after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Over the past decade, it has slowly replaced the Cold War system under which more than 1,000 U.S. nuclear warheads were assigned fixed targets in Russia.
In 1993, following the Persian Gulf War against Iraq, Gen. Lee Butler, then head of the U.S. Strategic Command, said deterring other countries from using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons required the ability to change targets quickly and that "adaptive planning" was the answer. Butler said, the United States should "consider the employment of both nuclear and conventional weapons."
Butler's view that conventional weapons had to be considered reflected his experience during the Gulf War, when he was part of the Pentagon planning staff that researched a contingency use of nuclear weapons against Iraqi weapons production facilities.
Butler said at a news conference in 1998 that the use of a nuclear weapon against Iraq would destroy America's standing in the Muslim world. "Can you imagine the impact in a part of the world where we worked so assiduously for so many years to build our presence, to build support and credibility, of being the nation that used a nuclear weapon against Arab peoples?" he said.
Reflecting Butler's views, the Strategic Command in the mid-1990s studied nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities in Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea, according to declassified documents. It suggested that conventional weapons be included in any contingency plans for attacking the sites.
By spending more than $1 billion during the Clinton administration on computer upgrades, the Strategic Command was able to reduce the time it takes to assign new targets for strategic weapons from months to hours, and in some cases minutes, according to former officials.
The Bush nuclear posture review calls for making the system more flexible. "The desire to shorten the time between identifying a target and having an option available will place significant stress on the nuclear planning process as it currently exists," the review says.
For example, to replace the major attack options against Russian targets that for years governed the role for almost all U.S. warheads on land- and submarine-based nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, the review talks of "immediate, potential or unexpected contingencies."
Immediate contingencies, which require pretargeted weapons, "include an Iraqi attack on Israel or its neighbors, a North Korean attack on South Korea or a military confrontation [with China] over the status of Taiwan," the review says.
Potential contingencies are "plausible but not immediate dangers" and include situations in which hostile states possess weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them. Unexpected contingencies are likened to the Cuban missile crisis or a change of government in a country that has nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya are mentioned in the report as countries having long-standing hostility toward the United States and so "could be involved in immediate, potential or unexpected contingencies."
Other classified sections of the study also raise questions about the real level of active, ready-for-use U.S. nuclear warheads that will remain available for deployment after reductions proposed by the Bush administration take effect over the next 10 years. The president has said the operational number of warheads would drop by two-thirds from today's level, which has been placed at 6,000 warheads, to 1,700 to 2,200.
However, the posture review puts today's active force at 8,000 warheads and says that by 2012 "approximately 3,000 warheads now in the active stockpile are planned to be transferred to the inactive stockpile or retired." That would leave 5,000 in the active category, far above the number mentioned by the president.
U.S. and Russian officials working on a proposed arms control agreement to be signed at a summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in May have yet to reach agreement on whether reduced warheads would be stored or destroyed.
Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, said removal of Russia from immediate weapons targeting reduces the possibility of a nuclear exchange between the two countries.
John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense think tank, noted that one classified paragraph in the nuclear review says that despite the changed relationship with Moscow, "Russia's nuclear forces and programs . . . remain a concern. . . . U.S. planning must take this into account."
©
2002 The Washington Post Company

[Onebyone]

" This is a weapon that would be smuggled into the United
States, and better resembles a small
robot aircraft than a missile. The striking power of this satellite guided
toy rocket is listed as two megatons.
The document says, "The shock wave from the air burst of our two
megaton mini combined with its own
reflection from the ground will form a blast wave of such power that
everything will be destroyed … within 8
to 13 U.S. miles of ground zero."

Ahhh maybe I didn't move far enough away from Atlanta???

If the shock wave goes that far then my goodness how far will the blast damage go? I am 50 miles out from Atlanta as the crow flies. Do you think we will get damage from one of these blasts?

Thanks for the post.... I think

[alchemike]

as a number of posters here have been arguing for a while, the tech is way beyond what most people think...

that includes some ex-mil people who believe that because they don't know about these things, they must not exist...

in any case, the tech has been advancing faster and faster for 70 years...there are weapons that are utterly insane...

this story, and others just as 'unbelievable' are plausible imho...

find out soon enough, i guess...

o)<

mike

ps...the world net daily link above does not work...can someone try again, who has it???

[jed turtle]

aren't the blast and the shock wave the same?

any ways , from the report i just posted:

"Butler said at a news conference in 1998 that the use of a nuclear weapon against Iraq would destroy America's standing in the Muslim world. "Can you imagine the impact in a part of the world where we worked so assiduously for so many years to build our presence, to build support and credibility, of being the nation that used a nuclear weapon against Arab peoples?" he said. "

sorry. i no longer care about what impact any US attack has on Iraq has on the Arab/ Muslim world. those arab/ muslim countries have been at war with the world for a very long time, and the US has become their #1 enemy in spite of all our "assiduousness" , sharing of technology, and gazillions of dollars buying their oil. it is clear, at least to me, that a number of countries are about to have their clocks cleaned. perhaps ours also. time to end this muslim madness. time for a very real ultimatim. sometimes war is the only answer. clearly, appeasement is never - repeat: NEVER- the answer.

[TECH32]

I say LA, SF and Seattle, WA. Why? Because I live on the east coast and they're all on the west coast!

-TECH32-

[endtimeobserver]

I think NYC for the economic impact on this nation, D.C. for the political impact and My feeling is Seattle, as the radiation and or nuclear foot print would isolate the canada and US border. The wind is prevailing west to east in the pacfic northwest which would cause a type of no man's land along the border. I do not think it would be san diego or LA as the same foot print would happen west to east thus cutting off anybody coming in from mexico along the california and arizona border. We all know something is going to happen whether you believe in the bible or not is not the question, with the current affairs and sabre rattling going on all over the world, it will happen, As each story has a beginning and a end, the timing is really what we all are asking, the results we know. As for myself I believe in the bible and Psalms 90 deals with the 6000 year reign of satan, and his time is UP. Go to you neariest Masonic Lodge and on the corner stone you will find two (2) dates one will be "Example" Ad 1960 that will be the year that particular building was built, along side it will be another day AL 5960. Now we know that BC/AD deals with the calendar, but the other date is AL which means after Lucifer, go check it out, most lodges have both of these dates, if ya have a shriners Hospital near by, the dates will be there too.

[dreamseeer]

OnebyOne

I just tried to PM you and your box is full.

[Onebyone]

Dreamseeer,

Cleared out some PM so it should work now.

[bigwavedave]

As any nuclear strategist might tell you: the development in Russia of a micro-nuclear fusion bomb would completely change the strategic nuclear balance. Undetectable from space, easy to deliver, such a device could not be tracked or counted by "national technical means." In addition, it would be the ultimate terrorist weapon.

well, since this article claims to know wassup, now everybody knows. russia is a new kind of enemy for giving iraq and other terrorist types these cool little bombs.

they better have enough to finish what they start cuz all hell is gonna break loose. in the end, it won't really matter who 'started it'. we've already decided whom to blame, so why don't they just do the deed? why wait? probably because a) they don't exist or b) they aren't in position or c) they don't have enough.

i'm going with choice 'a'.

[Squid]

that includes some ex-mil people who believe that because they don't know about these things, they must not exist...

Whhhaaattt.

As ex mil I know how compartmentalized the information is in .mil. Therefore even though I know what I know is only the tip of what is available for my compartment, always remember that Stealth techonology was developed in late 50's early 60's. Heck if we can take a look at the Stealth bombers at parades guess what we don't get to see.

and now for the good news about the article...


Uh never mind there is no good news.

[BB]

Links are fixed.

Thanks for the article Jed, it fits right in.

BWD: Hope you're right. But Tenet's testimony, the nuke plans leaked all over creation, the plans to attack Iraq, our threats to Russia lead me to believe Sadam had WMD here in the U.S. Dr. Morey knows whereof he speaks. Whether Red Mercury exists or not, we're in the crosshairs. Makes you want to go surfing one more time doesn't it?

[Bill P]

I doubt Russia wants a war with the US. Russia is smart and has had ample time to war game all the possible scenarios. I think they accept the concepts pf nuclear winter and mutual assured destruction. They will know they cant get all of our submarine fleet on a first strike.

Russia is (like everyone esle) desparate for cash and is selling anything they can that has value. It so happens that their military techology has a ready market among the militants that cant get USA military technology.

Both Clinton and Bush lobbied Russia to curtail their military trade. I think Tenet is just continuing the same message but more loudly and more publically to make sure Russia gets the message.

I think our gov is making sure that Russia will sit on the sidelines of Gulf War II same as Russia did for Gulf War I. I believe/hope Russia is smart enough to see that it is in their best interest not to oppose the US in the coming MidEast War.


Edited to add:

Three (3 ) only three??? Russian targets: NYC, DC and Chicago.

China will get the west coast.

IMO 3 would not be enough to do the job. I doubt that all our enemies combined ( the axis of evil 7) could take out our response capability on a first strike so therefore I doubt that a major power first strike will occur. Terrorists on the other hand have little to loose and are willing to die so all bets against a large scale but limited terror attack are off.

[expose']

Well.............$hit!!

BB........er.. thanks for the thread......

Tech32 and endtimeobserver.........Thanks! I live in the PNW!! Anything else you want to spell out for possible lurking terrorists trying to decide where to detonate these things if they do actually exist? Jeeze....

[The Flying Dutchman]

For weeks I have picked up hints, inuindos, and abstract phrases concerning Nyquist's summation(s). It <B>It all fits togeather now</B>. I wonder if the time frame has been speeded up by Saddem, Osama and pals.

Saturday? Man I hope so, the lady will be back from seeing her son by then. We managed to move the bulk of our heavier stuff to out intended destination this past week-end. Now all that's left is to sit and wait.

"As for me...I shall finish the Game"!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Shakey~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Soon it will be time to throw the key in the bucket

[Wildweasel]

"This is a weapon which would be smuggled into the United States, and better resembles a *small robot aircraft* than a missile. The striking power of this *satellite guided* toy rocket is listed as two megatons".

"The shock wave from the air burst of our two megaton mini combined with its own reflection from the ground will form a blast wave of such power that everything will be destroyed ... within 8 to 15 U.S. miles of ground zero."

While I still hold little creedence to the "red mercury" part of the article, the rest jives very correctly with things I do know.

The "small robot aircraft" is something which people like Iran, Iraq, India and Pakistan have been trying to build for the past few years. The incorporation of something like a GPS guided autopilot intended for a Cessna would be a very cost effective and militarily effective design.

I don't know why smuggling such a device into the country would be needed. I personally have serious concerns about a container ship being used as an aircraft carrier being used for a launching platform for either light aircraft like Cessnas or a low-budget cruise missile like this article seems to describe.

All it would take would be for a takeoff ramp to be constructed on the top of the containers. For the purposes of such a mission, lots of plywood and duct tape would do the job to bridge the gap between containers. Those items could easily be hidden in one or two containers easily accessable to the crew.

The aircraft themselves would also easily fit into one container per aircraft in a minumal state of disassembly. A crew could re-assemble an aircraft, fuel it and set up a runway during the night.

Before daybreak next morning the ship could be turned into the wind at full speed and the aircraft launched on suicide missions or on "cruise missile" attacks against coastal cities. If the planes were flown at low altitude and at speeds of eighty knots or less, they would avoid attention. Maybe not detection, but most light aircraft are not intercepted.

If such attacks were launched from twenty-five to thirty miles off the New Jersey or Delaware coast and the flights flown to blend in with the normal light aircraft traffic, they would very likely suceed. Much the same if they were launched off the coast of LA or San Francisco.

But in order to do so, they would have to be manned flights, just to have a pilot on board to handle radio calls and to make routine minor course changes as air traffic control might direct. That would let the plane get closer to target before alarms would be sounded.

The blast effect scenario laid out is very much correct for an airburst detonation somewhere between three and five thousand feet above ground level.

Again, I don't hold stock with the red mercury and I think such attacks would be suicide flights, not automated aircraft. But the technology for a light aircraft to carry a six hundred to one thousand pound weapon and to make an attack from a ship off shore or even from airstrips in Mexico or the Bahamas is a scary fact.

WW

[alchemike]

from ruppert's site...

www.fromthewilderness.com

anyone wanna give a go as to why this fella was/and is still being ignored???

a most important lead, imho...

vreeland has since been released and is somewhere in a safehouse in canada, presumably...

o)<

mike

US AND CANADIAN GOV’T POSITIONS CRUMBLING IN THE CASE OF A US INTELL OFFICER WITH FOREKNOWLEDGE OF
9/11 ATTACKS
by
Greta Knutzen, FTW Staff Writer
TORONTO, Feb. 27, 2002 -- Recently unsealed court documents show a man who claims to be a US intelligence officer accurately predicted the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon. Delmert Edward “Mike” Vreeland is currently incarcerated in a Toronto prison. His claims, however, are corroborated by evidence that has surfaced during his ongoing court battle in Canada. Court hearings in late-Feb. have only
deepened the mystery and added to the list of questions, calling into question the integrity of the US government.
Vreeland has been subject to physical attacks while behind bars, indicating that the certain death he fears if he is returned to the US,
might become a reality behind the jailhouse walls in Toronto.

As America wages an increasingly expensive and complex war against terrorism, Vreeland sits in a Canadian jail with a story to tell. It is a story about the murder of a Canadian Department of
Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Foreign Affairs) worker, and about foreknowledge of the horrific terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.
Despite Vreeland’s repeated attempts to inform both the American and Canadian governments, they have oddly and inexplicably refused to listen. Their argument goes something like this:
Vreeland is not perceived to be trustworthy or credible. Therefore, nothing he says can be deemed trustworthy or credible. But, they have never seen fit to ask how he knew of the attacks in the first
place.

Vreeland’s story does indeed resemble something John Grisham might produce in the throes of a caffeine-induced frenzy. However, Vreeland’s story begins to look less like the stuff of unadulterated fiction when one takes into account actions of US and Canadian authorities that seem equally bizarre.

It is becoming increasingly evident, as the case against him unfolds, that the documentation pertaining to Vreeland supplied by the US Navy and Canadian law enforcement officials, is itself so
contradictory and incomplete as to, frankly, defy logic. As such, the validity of the charges against Vreeland and the position adopted by US and Canadian authorities raise more questions than
they answer.
Vreeland, an American citizen who has been in jail since Dec. 6, claims he is a US Naval lieutenant who has worked for Naval intelligence since 1986.

The US is seeking to extradite Vreeland on a Michigan warrant. Crown Solicitors (Canadian government lawyers in Toronto) are representing the US government in this case, and have dismissed
Vreeland’s claims of affiliation with US intelligence as nonsense on the grounds that he lacks credibility.
Justice Archie Campbell of the Superior Court of Justice, who briefly presided over the case, is in agreement with the Crown’s assessment and has described Vreeland as “nothing more than a petty fraudsman with a vivid imagination.”
Ostensibly, Vreeland’s story begins in the fall of 2000. In a sworn affidavit filed in court documents on Oct. 16, Vreeland claims that he was sent on assignment to Russia where he was in contact with Marc Bastien, a computer systems specialist working for Foreign Affairs at Canada’s embassy in Moscow.
There Vreeland claims he acquired “information vital to the national security of the US and Canada.” Vreeland alleges he left Russia with the documents, and arrived in Canada on Dec. 2, 2000.
According to his affidavit, he expected to meet Bastien two days later in Toronto to hand over the documents to a third party.
Bastien did not show up, however, so Vreeland hung onto the documents. Vreeland asserts that he proceeded to upload the documents onto a secure website, the location of which is unknown to anyone to the present day, including his attorneys, Paul Slansky and Rocco Galati.
Vreeland claims that Bastien had given him two telephone numbers at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to contact in the event that anything went wrong. He was subsequently arrested in Toronto on Dec. 6, 2000, on alleged fraud charges. At the time of his arrest Vreeland claims that he attempted to contact CSIS, per Bastien’s instructions, but he was unsuccessful.
Upon his arrest, Vreeland was placed in solitary confinement. The reason for this treatment was the difficulty Toronto police had in confirming his identity. FBI fingerprint records, requested by the Toronto police, were negative, indicating that Vreeland had no criminal record.

After he was removed from solitary confinement on Jan. 15, 2001, he learned that six days after his arrest, on Dec. 12, 2000, Bastien was found dead. The official explanation was that he died of natural causes. Vreeland stated in his affidavit that he believed Bastien was in fact murdered, a statement which later proved correct.
In May, the US government issued a formal request for the extradition of Vreeland on charges of credit card fraud. It was at this point that he hired Slansky, and later, Galati, to fight the
extradition. Vreeland’s first objection was that the credit card in question was his own. In addition, his criminal record shows that he was detained in New York at the time the alleged offence was committed in Michigan. Both Vreeland and his lawyers believe that the US government is pursuing extradition on “minor and dubious
credit card charges,” when in fact the government intends to prosecute him for treason, a capital offence, in relation to the documents he retrieved from Russia.
In June, Vreeland informed his counsel that he had information vital to US and Canadian national security. He did not then, nor has he since, divulged the substance of this information to his counsel.
Between June and Sept., Vreeland’s counsel made repeated and exhaustive requests to US and Canadian intelligence offices that they speak to their client. Their requests were ignored, except for one meeting with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) on Aug. 8. The RCMP contacted the US Navy and was told that Vreeland had been unsatisfactorily discharged in 1986 after four
months of basic training.
The position of the Navy was contradicted by an attaché at the US embassy in Ottawa, who spoke with the RCMP and confirmed that Vreeland was a lieutenant in the US Navy. The Navy refused to
cooperate with the RCMP, and the attaché’s statement has since been retracted. Because of this, the RCMP did not follow up on the meeting, and Vreeland was dismissed as a “crank.”
On Oct. 5, Vreeland’s counsel wrote to the Canadian government’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The letter has been filed in court documents. The attorneys confirmed their
“head-bashing attempts” at convincing the RCMP to deal with their client in a serious manner, reiterating, “all that was being sought was an opportunity to place him in protective custody for 4-5 days so that you can satisfy yourselves as to the veracity of his national security information.”[Their emphasis]
It would seem, particularly in the wake of Sept. 11, that this was not an outlandish request. Were Vreeland to be formally debriefed he would be subjected to polygraph and psychological tests. If he is simply a “nut-case” with a vivid imagination and a penchant for forging government documents, then this would surely become evident fairly quickly and he would be sent back to his jail cell.
In August, Vreeland wrote down information from the documents he acquired in Moscow. The information was fed to him in jail by telephone from a contact he had on the outside who had access to the secure website.
He wrote down a list of potential targets of violent attacks that included the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. Also included in the note were names,
including that of “bin Laden.” The note contained the rather ominous phrase, “let one happen, stop the rest.” An exact copy of that note, obtained from court records, is online at
http://www.copvcia.com/free/ww3/01_28_02_vreeland.jpg
Vreeland requested that his guards seal the note and register it in his personal effects, which they did. The fact that the note was written and sealed a month prior to the violent attacks of Sept. 11 has not been disputed. Another name on the note was “Dr. Haider” followed by the question, “Whats his contacts.”[sic]
A man called Abu Doha, using the alias “Dr. Haider,” was arrested in London in early-2001. The sworn affidavit of an FBI special agent dated July 2 indicates that Doha was suspected of conspiring to bomb various US targets, including airports. Doha was allegedly a leader of an Algerian terrorist cell operating from Afghanistan,
associated with Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network, al Qaeda.
Coincidence or not, it certainly begs the question of how a jailed man with limited access to computers could know such an obscure detail.
Meanwhile, the efforts on the part of Vreeland’s counsel to defend his credibility resulted in the retrieval of his Navy personnel record. On Sept. 7, Commander Nieusma, naval liaison to the US
Congress in Washington, D.C. forwarded Vreeland’s attorneys 56 of 1,261 pages of Vreeland’s Navy personnel record. Commander Nieusma’s assistant, Tim Decent, later provided Vreeland’s extensive Navy medical records. These documents are available in court records.
So this begs the questions, how can a man, with only four months of basic navy training, manage to accumulate a 1,261-page personnel record and extensive medical records? Why are over a
thousand pages are missing? Why do the pages that do exist display clear omissions and evidence of tampering? So far, plausible answers to these questions have not been addressed by the Crown, or anyone else for that matter.
On Sept. 11, the US was subjected to violent attacks of an unprecedented scale. Three days after the attacks, on Sept. 14, Vreeland instructed his guards to retrieve the sealed note and open it. They did and promptly contacted Vreeland’s attorneys, who were unaware of the note. One would reasonably assume, indeed
expect, that the events of Sept. 11 would compel US and Canadian authorities to talk to Vreeland, but they continue, to this day, to ignore him, with only a few very tentative exceptions.
Parliamentary Secretary Lynn Meyers granted Galati a meeting, the first of three, in Ottawa on Sept. 20. They met again on Oct. 10 at Mr. Meyers’ office in Waterloo in the presence of Slansky and
another unidentified individual. During this meeting Meyers confirmed that Bastien, Vreeland’s alleged contact in Moscow, had indeed been murdered. Vreeland was thus vindicated on this point. The coroner’s report, which suggests Bastien was poisoned, was only made public three months later, on January 21.
On Oct. 15, Galati traveled again to Ottawa to meet Meyers, this time under the impression he would also meet Solicitor General Lawrence MacAulay to voice his concerns about Vreeland’s
information. The Department of the Solicitor General oversees Canadian law enforcement and intelligence communities. But, when Meyers and Galati met MacAulay, he refused to grant them
even 15 minutes of his time. The next day, Vreeland’s exasperated counsel filed his sworn affidavit into public record.
In an effort to seek clarity regarding Vreeland’s identity and the charges against him, his counsel filed a disclosure motion on Oct. 22. This motion amounts to a request that the US government be
compelled to produce Vreeland’s criminal record and Navy personnel record.
Instead of being a reason to disbelieve Vreeland, the criminal records alleging fraud are entirely consistent with covert intelligence operations. Vreeland was allegedly allowed a per diem of $19,000, and his credit cards would likely have been underwritten by the US Navy or the CIA. As documented by the history of the Iran-Contra scandal, any number of intelligence operatives who had discretionary control of large sums of money,
were routinely “controlled” by this method.
Among the Iran-Contra era figures who fit a similar pattern were Al Martin, Steve Carr, Scott Barnes, Scott Weekly, Jack Terrell, Lt. Col James “Bo” Gritz, and many more. It is also significant that Vreeland had apparently never served much time for the prior charges, suggesting that his claims of intelligence connections enabled him to be released from jail quickly.
Yet, on Oct. 25 Justice Campbell of the Superior Court of Justice denied the request of Vreeland’s counsel to compel production of records. Campbell’s decision was based on his belief that the evidentiary record, which is largely supported by conflicting documentation supplied by US and Canadian authorities, paints Vreeland as a petty fraud with a vivid imagination.
Galati’s response was if Vreeland is the petty criminal they claim he is, his criminal record “should take five minutes to produce.” It would also settle the argument as to Vreeland’s whereabouts at the time the alleged credit card fraud took place in Michigan. At present, records show him to be in two places at once, something
surely even Vreeland is not capable of.
Two attachés from the US consulate met on Oct. 24 with Vreeland’s counsel at the Barristers Lounge on University Avenue in Toronto. Galati stated that the Justice Department, representing the US government, refused to host the meeting on the grounds that the department did “not want to get involved.” Neither the attachés nor Vreeland’s counsel wanted to meet at either of their
respective offices. During this meeting, Vreeland’s attorneys informed the attachés that their client claimed to have information regarding threats to President Bush’s daughters, Jenna and Barbara, and Prime Minister Blair’s eldest son, Euan. According to Vreeland, the threats were posed by two terrorist cells -- one based in Montreal and the other in Europe.
The next day, Oct. 25, Slansky was telephoned and informed that a US Secret Service agent was on his way from Buffalo to meet with Vreeland and his lawyers. The agent and Vreeland spoke alone for 30 minutes. It is interesting that on the day Vreeland was described as a petty conman by Justice Campbell, a Secret Service agent took time out of his busy schedule to interview this
conman about threats to the children of the leaders of the free world.
Several days later, on Oct. 29, the US counselor officer, David Abell and his assistant Ms. Kasey Flemming, met Vreeland in the presence of his counsel. Abell is the head of American Citizen
Services at the US consulate in Toronto. The subject of this meeting was confidential, and no other meeting has taken place since.
On Jan. 10 Vreeland’s counsel took a very big risk. Slansky telephoned the Pentagon in open court. Slansky first called directory assistance in Washington. D.C., and was provided with the main number for the Pentagon. The Pentagon operator confirmed Lt. D. Vreeland’s rank, room and telephone number. The Canadian lawyers called into question the reliability of the telephonic demonstration. They argued that Vreeland, who, as they claim, had no particular education or training, was able to arrange from jail to manipulate the Pentagon’s computer and simply insert his information by telephone and e-mail.
Galati said two days after this display in court, a clerk at the Canadian Justice Department was informed that an NCIS investigator had gone on record to say that US authorities were at a loss to explain how Vreeland had manipulated the system. Hacking into or manipulating the Pentagon’s computer system is a federal offence.
The telephone call to the Pentagon revealed one of two possibilities -- either Vreeland manipulated the computer system, or he is who he says he is, and it is the government who is manipulating the
system. The presiding judge, Justice MacDonald, formed the opinion that it is more probable that Vreeland managed to manipulate the system. He found Vreeland to be an “imaginative and manipulative person who has little regard for the truth.”
Although MacDonald acknowledged that the computerized records provided by US law enforcement officials regarding Vreeland’s
criminal convictions are “terse, incomplete and confusing,” he rejected the request made by Vreeland’s counsel that their client’s asylum claim be permitted to proceed on constitutional grounds.
In other words, MacDonald’s decision was based on a subjective assessment of degrees of probability, rather than proven fact. Galati, who intends to appeal the decision, said that Macdonald’s
“judgment suspends reality and brings judicial proceedings into the realm of Alice in Wonderland.”
The latest round of court appearances, presided over by Justice Laforme, began on Feb. 18. Slansky argued that as the Canadian government’s position attacks the credibility of his client, then it is
only fair that he be given the opportunity to defend his client’s credibility.
As Vreeland’s counsel has been denied access to their client’s certified criminal record and the missing pages from his Navy personnel record, they have opted for the next best thing -- witnesses. Slansky requested that he be permitted to summon
witnesses during the extradition hearing that could corroborate Vreeland’s story. Among the witnesses they seek to question are individuals familiar with Pentagon computer security and personnel records, as well as Commander Nieusma, who forwarded Vreeland’s inconsistent Navy personnel record. The judge’s decision on this matter is still pending.
In an unsettling turn of events, Slansky alerted Justice Laforme that Vreeland was allegedly physically assaulted and threatened by a prison guard on the evening of Feb. 18, and again the following morning. Vreeland has pressed charges, and Laforme ordered that the guard in question was to have no contact with Vreeland pending an investigation into the allegations.
Vreeland has a history serving as an informant against organized crime interests in Michigan. This history may offer a possible explanation for the recent assaults. In future stories FTW will
explore Vreeland’s relationship with organized crime and the long history of the relationship between organized crime and the CIA.
Whatever the precise nature of Vreeland’s identity and criminal history is, it should be largely irrelevant if he has information that could help the government with its investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks. The FBI does not subject informants or individuals who call with “tips” to stringent evaluation. In many cases they do not even require an informant’s name.
So why is the personal credibility of a man who has been right about the murder of a Foreign Affairs worker, and who had foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks an issue? Mike Vreeland’s
story raises the question of why the US and Canada insist on ignoring such an obvious investigative lead. If no stone is to be left unturned, why is Vreeland’s Rock of Gibraltar being left alone?

[mutter]

wow! this thead is becoming the looking glass in many ways imho.
while this is not 'exactly' what we have been talking about here tonight, nonetheless i think it may have more significance than we know....just coming off the wires tonight!

[fair use for educational purposes]


Former KGB Agent Living in U.S. Summoned to Moscow

March 26
— By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general living in the United States, said on Tuesday he would not comply with a summons ordering him to Moscow for an interrogation by the Russian domestic intelligence service.

An officer of the Russian consulate in Washington on Monday served Kalugin the summons from the FSB domestic intelligence service, which did not provide any reason for it, he said.

"I have an official summons from Moscow which was delivered by the consular official of the Russian Embassy which says that I am required to come to Moscow on March 28 for interrogation as a defendant, but no reason given," Kalugin told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"And the notification says that if I do not show up at the designated time I may be forced to come," he said.

Kalugin is a permanent resident "green card" holder of the United States, but still a Russian citizen.

"I will apply for U.S. protection, if necessary, but for the time being I see no reason because it's not a court action, it's an action of the domestic service which has no right to intervene," Kalugin said.

He said the "ostensible" reason for the summons may be his testimony in the spy case of retired U.S. Army Reserve Col. George Trofimoff, but that the real reason was "revenge."

Trofimoff, the highest-ranking American military officer convicted of spying, was sentenced to life in prison last September for selling military secrets to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Kalugin said he was not the one who uncovered Trofimoff as a Soviet spy to U.S. and British intelligence services.

"When I was subpoenaed to come to Tampa to testify, the whole matter was already finished, I simply was used as a last witness," Kalugin said.

"I simply confirmed what had been known already for years. I confirmed that I was his supervisor," Kalugin said, referring to his previous KGB relationship to Trofimoff.

The real reason for the summons, Kalugin said, was revenge by former KGB officers trying to undermine him for his vocal criticism of the former intelligence service.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB agent, shortly after his election publicly called Kalugin a traitor and Kalugin responded by calling Putin a war criminal, Kalugin said.

"After that exchange ... it's simply unwise to go to Moscow under any circumstances," Kalugin said with a dark laugh.

However, he said he was concerned for the welfare of his daughter and grandson who still live in Moscow.

"It shows an increasing influence of the old KGB guard on Mr. Putin and his security services," Kalugin said.

"It's an act of revenge and nothing else."

http://printerfriendly.abcnews.com/p...ice=ABCNewsCom

.......i`m gonna go to bed and pray myself to sleep now.

[Greybeard7]

As some were discussing potential targets, I decided to look up the busiest ports in the US in the 2002 World Almanac.

The results surprised me.

Per their ranking by tonnage in 1999:

1-South Louisiana, LA 214,196,912

2-Houston, TX 158,828,203

3-New York, NY & NJ 133,715,223

4-New Orleans,LA 87,511,476

5-Corpus Christi, TX 77,986,587

6-Beaumont, TX 69,405,951

7-Baton Rouge, LA 63,728,759

8-Plaquemines, LA 62,461,023

Of the top 8 ports in the US, in 1999, by tonnage, Louisiana had 4 ports accounting for 427.898 million tons of cargo. Texas had 3 ports accounting for 306.221 million tons of cargo, and New York/New Jersey had 1 port accounting for 133.715 million tons.

If you just picked the top 3 ports, you would disrupt or halt the flow of 506.740 million tons of cargo in a year.

Interesting that 60 Minutes had a segment on port security and cargo containers Sunday night.

How many tons of oil do we import each year?

Hmmmm. Very interesting.

GB7

[mt4design]

in contemplating all of this I came to the following realization.

On the morning of 9/11 I was just waking up when my wife came in and said, "Mike, a plane just hit the World Trade Center in New York!"

Still trying to wake up, my first concious thought was, "it isn't an accident."

As I sat myself down to watch events unfold on t.v. I was horrified to see the towers collapse into the tragedy we all know well.

"They actually did it. They actually did it this time."

I remember saying that over and over again in total shock and amazement.

I wont be amazed again.

Where these people have the will they will find the way. Their desire is our destruction.

Some here think that Russia has too much to lose. IMHO, Russia (Russian Intelligencia and their mafia) have been behind the planning of this for decades. This type of action, manipulation, etc., cannot be possible without patience, funding, and desire.

We "won" the Cold War...but it may have been an empty, manipulated victory. Look at what they've accomplished under the guise of detante and peristroyka. They've built entire cities UNDERGROUND. They've continued to develop advanced weapons systems that rival our own all while claiming to be bankrupt. WE'VE helped them prepare for our destruction.

There is such poetry in this tragedy. Shakespeare would feel jealous that he didn't pen this little drama himself.

9/11 was TEOTWAWKI. Now...we may just be waiting for the end of our world.

I, for one, will never live under a communist moon, a muslim crecent, etc.

I'm ready to die and I'll fight to survive because I am determined to fight on the side of God.

Or, I could just pray this is all nonsense and hope I wake up on 9/11/01 with the WTC still intact and this was all just a bad dream.

Mike

[TwiceBorn]

Wow, scary stuff here, don't guess I'll be getting much sleep tonight.

From the sound of this article Sodamn Insane has had this red mercury for some time now.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.manuelsweb.com/sam_cohen.htm

Bomb inventor says U.S. defenses suffer because of politics

06/15/97
By Christopher Ruddy

FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW

LOS ANGELES - For most of Sam Cohen's life, he has struggled against politicians who, in his opinion, have sacrificed good sense when it comes to the nation's defenses. Cohen is the physicist who invented the neutron bomb, the one that kills people but leaves things like tanks and buildings intact. Plans to deploy his creations in Europe during the '70s and '80s awakened the "peace movement" across that continent, stopping its deployment.

With that and other battles lost, the 76-year-old Cohen finds solace in his Brentwood home, nestled high on a hill overlooking Los Angeles. There the world is far more peaceful, or so it seems. Just down the road is the Rockingham estate of one O.J. Simpson. Cohen would pass there often during his morning walks, and occasionally see the former football star. "He was always pleasant," Cohen recounted.

Cohen would probably be unfazed if confronted by a knife-wielding mugger - a threat insignificant in the scheme of things. What worries him are weapons of mass destruction - nuclear ones that destroy whole cities.

The politicians tell us that our security has never been better. Cohen describes the present situation as "scary, more scary than ever before." He's concerned that the Clinton administration has decided it is politically incorrect to even think about the design and development of nuclear weapons. The head of the division of the Livermore National Laboratories in charge of such weapon development has threatened to resign if he is ordered to develop new weapons, Cohen noted in a recent interview.

The government doesn't want people to even think about nuclear weapons, which is like telling Sam Cohen he is no longer permitted to breathe.

As a kid from Brooklyn who graduated with a physics degree from UCLA, he enlisted in the Army after Pearl Harbor. In 1944 Cohen was assigned to the top-secret Manhattan Project to develop atomic weapons at Los Alamos, N.M. Cohen had the mundane job of calculating how neutrons behaved in "Fat Man" - the nickname of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. (The bomb dropped on Hiroshima three days earlier was nicknamed "Little Boy.")

The boring work was all worthwhile because Cohen eventually stood in the Nevada desert and witnessed something on par with the Transfiguration: an atomic explosion. Cohen saw firsthand the awesome power of the unleashed atom as human history entered a new age. "Awesome spectacle" is how Cohen still describes the event. Puffing on a cigar as he relaxed in his easy chair wearing a T-shirt and jogging pants, Sam remembered that day vividly.

World War II flying hero Jimmy Doolittle stood next to him when the bomb went off. "The little guy was blown down," Cohen recalled.

After the war ended, Cohen joined the Rand Corp. where he was paid to continue thinking about nuclear weapons. He was obsessed with the idea of a neutron bomb, one that would make use of the lethal particles he had observed so studiously at Los Alamos.

The earliest bombs had used nuclear fission, splitting heavy atoms to release energy. Later bombs used nuclear fusion, which fused hydrogen atoms to release energy. Both designs produced tremendous blasts that could level whole cities, and left them uninhabitable for long periods because of lingering radiation.

Cohen's neutron bomb would use nuclear fusion, but in a different way. The detonation of a neutron bomb would still produce an explosion, but one much smaller than a standard nuclear weapon's. The main effect of a neutron bomb would be the release of high-energy neutrons that would take lives far beyond the blast area. The result: fewer buildings, cars, tanks, roads, highways and other structures destroyed.

And unlike standard nuclear bombs that leave long-term contamination of the soil and infrastructure, the neutron radiation quickly dissipates after the explosion.

For Cohen, the neutron bomb is the ultimate sane weapon. It kills humans, or as he puts it "the bad guys," but doesn't produce tremendous collateral damage on civilian populations and the infrastructure a civilian population needs to survive.

This meant, in Cohen's mind, that a conventional war could escalate without immediately leading to an all-out nuclear holocaust. If regular nuclear weapons were used across Europe, the radioactive fallout could turn the continent into a wasteland for decades. That wouldn't be the case if neutron bombs were used.

Between 1958 and 1961 the neutron bomb idea was tested successfully, but the politicians in Washington nixed development and deployment of the weapon. Cohen persisted. As the Vietnam War began and festered in the 1960s, Cohen became an advocate of using neutron bombs there. To Cohen, his weapon was "a perfect fit" for dealing with the Viet Cong hidden in the jungles and rice paddies.

Again, the politicians had other ideas. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ruled that no nuclear weapons of any type would be used in the war. The use of the small neutron bombs would have brought the war to a quick end, Cohen still argues, and saved the loss of more than 50,000 American lives.

In 1969, Cohen was fired from the Rand Corp. for continuing to advocate the use of tactical neutron bombs to end the conflict. "I lost all my battles," Cohen says today.

In 1979, he was in Paris helping the French build their own arsenal of neutron bombs when presidential candidate Ronald Reagan came through on a European tour. Cohen met with Reagan to brief him on the neutron bomb. Reagan grasped the idea of neutron weaponry immediately, and made a pledge to Cohen, and later a public pledge, that he would reverse Carter administration policy by building and deploying a large number of neutron bombs.

As president, Reagan fulfilled that pledge and approximately a thousand weapons were constructed. But criticism from European allies kept the weapons from being deployed across Europe.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism as we knew it, the Bush administration moved to dismantle all of our tactical nuclear weapons, including the Reagan stockpile of neutron bombs. In Cohen's mind, America was brought back to Square One. Without tactical weapons like the neutron bomb, America would be left with two choices if an enemy was winning a conventional war: surrender, or unleash the holocaust of strategic nuclear weapons.

Other nation's haven't been afflicted by the U.S. blindness regarding neutron bombs. According to Cohen:

Evidence exists that China has neutron bombs stockpiled, and that the United States gave the Chinese the technology to build them.

Russia has a large quantity of such weapons, as well as the world's largest arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Israel has hundreds of neutron weapons. The neutron bombs would allow Israel to stop advancing Arab armies and tank columns - even one on Israeli soil - without permanently contaminating the land.

South Africa, which constructed a cache of neutron weapons before the end of white rule, claimed it dismantled those weapons before handing over power to the Nelson Mandela government. Cohen, however, claims to have it on good authority that white military leaders still control the secret stockpile as "an insurance policy."

Most frightening for Cohen is the relative ease by which neutron bombs can be created with a substance called red mercury. Red mercury is a compound containing mercury that has undergone massive irradiation. When exploded, it creates tremendous heat and pressure - the same type needed to trigger a fusion device such as a mini-neutron bomb.

Before, an obstacle to creating a nuclear bomb was the need for plutonium, which when exploded could create a fusion reaction in hydrogen atoms. But red mercury has changed that. The cheap substance has been produced in Russia, Cohen said, and shipped on the black market throughout the world.

Cohen said that when U.N. inspectors went to Iraq to examine the Iraqis' nuclear weapons capabilities, the U.N. team found documents showing that they had purchased quantities of red mercury. The material means a neutron bomb can be built "the size of baseball" but able to kill everyone within several square blocks.

The public isn't being warned about this development because the politicians have little desire to combat the menace or to confront nations like Iraq, Iran and Libya that likely would use such weapons, Cohen said.

Cohen has little faith in the politicians anyway. "Every president since Truman, with the possible exception of Eisenhower, would have sold the country out if it came down to a nuclear confrontation," he said.

Cohen on nation security issues

In a recent interview, Sam Cohen, the father of the neutron bomb, offered his views on several national security issues:

RUSSIA: Though the Cold War is over and Russia appears in disarray, Cohen suggested that the situation remains dangerous because Russia has "far and away substantially more nuclear weapons than we do." While U.S. policy makers have been busy dismantling our nuclear arsenal, Russia continues to modernize.

The United States has been paying billions of dollars for the leftover plutonium from Russia's dismantled weapons, but evidence indicates that the Russians have not been turning over weapons-grade plutonium. Instead, the United States has been paying for, and not objecting to, material from their nuclear power plants - a strong sign the Russians are not dismantling their weapons.

MISSILE DEFENSES: Calling a ballistic missile defense system "absolutely necessary," Cohen said American space-based plans so far have been a "debacle" that have cost taxpayers more than $50 billion.

Cohen argued that the "Star Wars" plan envisioned by President Ronald Reagan was inherently flawed. Politicians, once again fearing the "n" word, promised that nuclear weapons would not be used in any missile defense system. Cohen contends Reagan received misleading advice that technology was advanced enough to create a non-nuclear missile defense system.

Almost 15 years have passed since Reagan's call for a missile defense system, and still no weapons have been deployed. Cohen said that, had nuclear weapons been used, a fairly inexpensive system could already have been deployed. In such a system, nuclear weapons are exploded high in the atmosphere to either destroy or knock off trajectory incoming missiles. While the radioactive fallout from such explosions would pose some threat to civilian populations, it would be infinitely less harmful than having enemy missiles hit their targets.

Already, Cohen reported, the Russians have a sophisticated nuclear-based missile defense system around Moscow and possibly elsewhere. According to published intelligence reports, in the late 1980s the Russians began developing a "plasma weapon" for missile defenses. The plasma weapon uses nuclear energy to ionize the atmosphere, destroying or rendering inoperable any missiles passing through the plasma field.

SEAPOWER: Cohen said navies have become "obsolete" in terms of global warfare using nuclear weapons, and he described floating ships as "sitting ducks" for nuclear weapons. The U.S. Navy depends on AEGIS missile defense systems to protect its fleets, but Cohen said AEGIS has failed all of its tests, and there is no proof that it could fend off a multi-missile strike against a fleet, let alone a country.

Cohen said the U.S. Navy should put more resources into nuclear-powered submarines because of the difficulty any enemy might have in destroying them in a first strike.

For years, the nuclear submarines were the most important part of our deterrent against surprise nuclear attack, primarily because the submarine captain and crew did not need special codes, known as permissive action links or PALs, to fire their weapons. Thus, if a surprise attack disabled our military communications, the submarine could still counterattack.

In recent years, Cohen said, the Clinton administration has instituted the use of PALs on nuclear missile submarines, limiting their deterrence value.

CHINA: Cohen thinks China will soon be in position to blackmail the United States into reneging on promises to defend Taiwan. Already China has made overt threats about hitting the U.S. mainland with nuclear weapons. "China has said, `OK, if you defend Taiwan, we'll drop a nuclear weapon on Los Angeles,'" Cohen said.

In a trip to Taiwan, Cohen spoke before the military leadership there and strongly advised them to begin their own nuclear weapons program. The United States will not defend you because the politicians don't care about you, he told them.

[dabom]

I wonder if this:

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showt...threadid=25559

has anything to do with this:

" The document also refers
to a top secret Russian stealth satellite termination system (called
S.S.S.T.). According to Vreeland, this is a stealth orbital platform
armed with clusters of electromagnetic pulse bombs capable of
knocking out global communications and frying U.S. nuclear
warheads leaving the Western Hemisphere.

[Loon]

What dragger, what a story. When does the movie come out?

[BB]

Thanks Twiceborn. That was a great article to support that RM does exist. Sam Cohen, Father of the Neutron Bomb, should know imo. I did a google search on RM and found a few links that validate Cohen:

http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1.../msg00643.html

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/368/3616.html

http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/eng/comment/com57_e.html

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache...y+weapon&hl=en

[lynnie]

Wow BB, what a scary article!! I wonder if it will turn out to be one of the most significant ones ever posted here.

[Mrs. Peavey]

Hi Mutter,
You mentioned you were listening to a program and heard that Saturday was "the day". I'm trying to guess if that's the day the U.S. attacks Iraq, or the day that the U.S. is attacked. And, why Saturday........any reason given as to why this date? Just trying to sort this all out.

[BB]

No Lynnie. Looks like it'll be Limerick relief.