| |
|
|
| |
|
Because terrorists and their sponsors have shown clear desire and intent to acquire and use nuclear weapons against the United States...
|
| |
|
Osama bin Laden has publicly declared that Al Queda - the same terrorist organization responsible for destroying the Twin Towers in New York City and attacking the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 - is seeking nuclear weapons and intends to use them to destroy the United States. In fact, Osama bin Laden believes, in his own words, that this a "religious duty." 1
|
| |
| They are deadly serious. Bin Laden's official spokesman has proclaimed, |
| |
|
"We have the right to kill 4 million Americans - 2 million of them children -
and to exile twice as many, and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands.". 2
|
| |
|
And Al Queda is trying to get nuclear weapons. They attempted to buy heavily enriched uranium (the key ingredient for making a nuclear bomb) from South Africa.3 They met with the head scientists of Pakistan's nuclear program and, according to U.S. intelligence agencies, have acquired blueprints for constructing nuclear weapons.4
Worse, Al Queda is not alone.
|
| |
|
Hezbollah, an, Islamic terrorist organization based out of Lebanon, was responsible for blowing up the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1982, killing 241 Americans (at that time, the largest terrorist attack ever). According to Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah,
|
| |
|
"Death to America was, is, and will stay our slogan." 5
|
| |
|
Hezbollah is viewed as one of the most capable and complex terrorist organizations in the world, able to plan and carry out far more complicated attacks than even Al Queda.6 And, they are backed by Iran. Iran gives Hezbollah over $100 million dollars each year to finance its terrorist infrastructure.7 If Iran or another state were to merely give Hezbollah sufficient heavily enriched uranium, Hezbollah has the expertise, experience, and man-power to quickly develop, deliver, and explode a nuclear bomb almost anywhere in the world.8
|
| |
|
Chechen separatists are also a significant concern. They have actually stolen nuclear material, made a radioactive bomb, and placed it in one of the largest cities in Europe. And they have very close ties to Al Queda.
|
| |
In the 1990's, they made a radioactive bomb (a "dirty" bomb), mixing seventy pounds of Cesium-137 and dynamite and placing it in Moscow's Ismailovsky Park.9 They stole radioactive materials from Russia's Volgodonskaya nuclear power station in 2001-2002.10 They discovered and conducted reconnaissance of Russia's secret nuclear warhead transportation convoys and storage sites at least four times in 2001 and 2002.11 The former chief of staff of the Chechen rebel army, Islam Khasukhanov, once served as second-in-command of a Russian Pacific fleet nuclear submarine. Their largest financial supporters have included Al Queda and other Islamic extremist organizations.12
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
| |
1 R. Yousafsai, ABC News Interview with Osama bin Laden, 22 December, 1998.
2 Al Queda website, June, 2002 (now expired; see MEMRI: Middle East Research Institute, Special Dispatch Series, No. 388 for a translation).
3 J. Kluger, Time, 12 November, 2001.
4 K. Khan, Washington Post, 16 December, 2001.
5 D. Wakin,New York Times, 11 May 2003
6 CIA Director George Tenent, testimony, February, 2003.
7 G. Allison, Nuclear Terrorism - The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2004), pg 36.
8 Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, quoted in Yedioth Achronot, 15 October, 2006. "If the atomic bomb reaches Iranian hands it will reach other hands. International fears - not only Israel's - are that these weapons reach other players like Hezbollah."
9 G. Allison, pg. 31. Also: M. Riebling and R.P. Eddy, "Jihad@Work," The National Review, 24 October, 2002.
10 G. Allison, pg. 33.
11 V. Bogdanov, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 1 November, 2002; P. Koryashkin, ITAR-TASS, 25 October, 2001; and Associated Press, 26 October, 2001.
12 G. Allison, pg. 33.
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
