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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7240414.stm

More than two weeks later, however, the story seems ambiguous. Investigators found only a trace of explosives. No plot was detected in France, and no arrests have been made in any of the other countries. Leaders of the Pakistani community in Barcelona say they were unfairly targeted.

Some Western investigators believe the alleged plot was one of the most serious threats in Spain since the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in 2004. Others, including some Spanish anti-terrorism officials, doubt that an attack was imminent.

But they all agree that the case illustrates a shift in the landscape — and they are struggling to adjust.

For years, Al Qaeda leaders based in Pakistan almost exclusively targeted Britain, using radicals among the more than 1 million residents of South Asian descent. Those networks have showed greater ability and determination to strike the West than the North African or Middle Eastern groups that have been the main threat to continental Europe.

During the last six months, however, Danish, German and now Spanish authorities have broken up alleged plots linked to the Waziristan region of Pakistan, where investigators have detected an increase in Western recruits at clandestine training compounds. The cases suggest that Al Qaeda and its allies are trying to recruit within a rapidly growing Pakistani immigrant population in continental Europe.

As Britain has toughened border controls, more South Asian immigrants have headed elsewhere in Europe seeking economic opportunity and respite from turmoil at home. Some have arrived legally, but others travel along smuggling routes through the Middle East and Africa.

Although extremists remain a small minority, the presence of militant cells has increased along with the population, anti-terrorism officials say.

Al Qaeda strategists want to tap into smaller Pakistani immigrant communities as they have recruited in Britain in the past, said Sajjan Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security think tank in London. “It fits into the whole pattern. And they know they are not being monitored as much in other countries.”

Investigators who have developed language skills and informants to monitor North Africans and Arabs lack expertise with the Pakistani community. Police admit that this raises the risk of missing threats — or exaggerating them.

In France, the Pakistani population has doubled in a decade and is now between 50,000 and 60,000, French officials say. The fast-growing community in Spain numbers about 60,000.

Pakistanis in Spain have settled mostly in Barcelona, drawn by its industry and entrepreneurial tradition. Mosques and shops line the narrow medieval streets of the Raval, a gentrifying former red-light district near the Ramblas promenade.

Pakistani-owned general stores are called “Badulaques,” the Spanish name for the Kwik-E-Mart run by Apu on “The Simpsons,” though that character is actually Indian.

As president of an alliance of 25 immigrant associations, Saqib Tahir led a campaign to open a Pakistani consulate in Barcelona. He operates a construction consulting firm on the elegant Paseo de Gracia, an address that exudes success.

“I don’t think there is any European city outside Britain with so many Pakistanis,” said Tahir, 35. “I have been a Spanish citizen since 1992. We have been content here.”

Community leaders complain that the raids were a result of faulty intelligence and cultural ignorance. Tahir knows the two alleged leaders of the group and believes they are innocent.

“We go to work and people think we might be a terrorist,” Tahir said. “On the subway, they look at us like we are suspicious.”

Anti-terrorism officials say there is something to worry about.

The spy in Barcelona traveled in Europe and Pakistan for France’s domestic and foreign intelligence services, and also worked for Spain’s spy agency, officials say. Tahir said two suspects who were detained and released describe the informant as a Pakistani immigrant.

Between late October and early January,he helped track three men suspected of training in Waziristan who traveled to Spain via Stockholm, Frankfurt and Portugal, investigators say.The French alerted the Spanish spy agency, according to a French intelligence official.

“We knew these individuals were arriving and we suggested that they be investigated,” the French official said.

The three are Mohammed Shoaib, 25; Mehmood Khalid, 28; and Imran Cheema, age undisclosed, all recent arrivals accused by the Spanish judge of planning a suicide attack on the weekend of their arrest.

“This pattern is common in Islamic extremist organizations, which in order to carry out a terrorist attack deploy suicide attackers shortly before executing it,” Judge Ismael Moreno wrote in the preliminary indictment Jan. 23.

Moreno described Maroof Ahmed Mirza, 37, imam at a Raval mosque, and Mohammed Ayoub, 63, a baker, as the cell’s ideologues and Hafeez Ahmed, 40, as an explosives expert who had just returned from five months in Pakistan.

The spy told investigators he was summoned to Barcelona by the network and discovered a plot in high gear. Some of the suspects regarded him as a graduate of a Pakistani training camp who was prepared to commit a suicide bombing, investigators say.

Pakistani community leaders think the informant framed the group to win favor with his handlers. Tahir says the suspects are peaceful members of the Tablighi Jamaat, a sect dedicated to itinerant preaching. The Tablighi Jamaat publicly rejects violence, though it has been linked to a number of alleged plots.

In later testimony, portions of which were published by El Pais newspaper and confirmed by anti-terrorism officials, the spy said the group talked about bombing subways, dispatched operatives to other cities, and engaged in “martyrdom” prayers. At the home of Ahmed, the alleged explosives expert, the spy said he saw furtive activity with suspicious materials. A suspect allowed him to call his family, then told him he would never talk to them again, according to the El Pais account and investigators.

Suspects alluded to Baitullah Mahsud, a Waziristan warlord allied with Al Qaeda and accused by the Pakistani government of orchestrating the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December,as the mastermind of the plot, according to the spy’s account.

Mahsud has followers in Europe, the Spanish anti-terrorism official said. But he and others question whether the warlord has the expertise to plot attacks in the West.

Because of the fear of imminent bloodshed, Spanish agents had little time to gather corroborating evidence, investigators say. To the dismay of French intelligence officials, a prized informant was exposed as a result. A Western anti-terrorism official said the threat was seriousbut acknowledged the gaps in the case.

“It all comes down to the credibility of the source,” the official said.

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U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban government in 2001, but Taliban rebels launched an insurgency two years ago and violence has risen sharply since then.

Miliband, who visited Afghanistan last week with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said it was vital other NATO members increase their commitment.

“It would help precipitate even more dangerous insecurity in Afghanistan (if the international community pulled out),” Miliband told BBC radio. “If more effort is not made, Afghanistan risks becoming a ‘failed state.’”

“We do need the whole of the international community, including European countries, to step up,” he said.

Burns, speaking ahead of talks with British officials on Afghanistan and other areas of foreign policy, said it was unfair that a few NATO members — mentioning the Americans, British, Dutch and Canadians — were shouldering the burden.

“It is incumbent on us to say, with great respect, we need help from Germany and the other major west European countries,” he told reporters, when asked about Germany’s involvement.

“It’s hard to think of a successful military operation when the majority of the capitals are saying we decide where and when the troops are deployed,” he said.

He referred to the large number of Canadian casualties, adding: “For Canada to do all that and not have the support of every country in the alliance to come and help with resupply, with helicopters, with combat troops, is not a recipe for success.”

In Canada, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said that while he did not think “we’re nearing any sort of a crumbling or a collapse of the Alliance,” the response from NATO would reflect its ability to conduct major missions.

“We share the view that other countries have to come to the fold. And part of that is (showing) a willingness to make these difficult, tough sacrifices in a military mission such as this,” he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Burns said he believed NATO’s mission was heading “in the right direction” and would ultimately defeat the Taliban.

France has indicated a willingness to send more troops, but Germany has been adamant it cannot do more.

Britain, the second largest contributor to the 43,000-strong ISAF international peace force, is feeling intense pressure as its 7,000 soldiers — based mostly in southern Helmand province — battle increasingly fierce resistance and casualties rise.

Aside from the military campaign, Miliband and Burns stressed the need for greater effort on the civilian side.

Burns said he was worried that the civilian effort had been “disjointed” and hoped the appointment of a new United Nations envoy could help coordinate this. Afghan President Hamid Karzai rejected Britain’s Paddy Ashdown for the role.

(Reporting by Katherine Baldwin and Kate Kelland in London and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Tim Pearce)

International terrorism today aims to disrupt and destroy our societies, our economies and our way of life. …

These different sources of Islamist propaganda and/or violence vary in their intellectual underpinnings, sectarian and political aims, … . But what they have in common is an assault on the values of the West – on its democratic processes and its freedom of religion…

Notwithstanding the common perception in the West, the origin of Islamist terrorism is not victimhood, nor an inferiority complex, but a well-financed superiority complex grounded in a violent political ideology.

If the irrational and fanatical Islamist organizations get out of hand, there is a risk that, … the rise of fundamentalisms and despotisms will usher in a new, illiberal age, in which the liberties that Western societies enjoy are seriously jeopardized.

The threats that the West and its partners face today are a combination of violent terrorism against civilians and institutions, wars fought by proxy by states that sponsor terrorism, the behaviour of rogue states, the actions of organised international crime, and the coordination of hostile action through abuse of non-military means.

Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership”.

Group report by former chiefs of staff General John Shalikashvili, (US), General Klaus Naumann (Germany), Field Marshal Lord Inge (UK), Admiral Jacques Lanxade (France) and Henk van den Breemen (The Netherlands), published by the Netherlands based Noaber Foundation, December 2007, (emphasis added)

The controversial NATO sponsored report entitled “Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership“. calls for a first strike use of nuclear weapons. The preemptive use of nukes would also be used to undermine an “increasingly brutal World” as a means to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction:

“They the authors of the report consider that nuclear war might soon become possible in an increasingly brutal world. They propose the first use of nuclear weapons must remain “in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction”. (Paul Dibb, Sidney Morning Herald, 11 February 2008)

The group, insists that the option of first strike of nuclear weapons is “indispensable, since there is simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world.” (Report, p. 97, emphasis added):

Nuclear weapons are the ultimate instrument of an asymmetric response – and at the same time the ultimate tool of escalation. Yet they are also more than an instrument, since they transform the nature of any conflict and widen its scope from the regional to the global. …

…Nuclear weapons remain indispensable, and nuclear escalation continues to remain an element of any modern strategy.

Nuclear escalation is the ultimate step in responding asymmetrically, and at the same time the most powerful way of inducing uncertainty in an opponent’s mind. (Ibid, emphasis added)

The Group’s Report identifies six key “challenges”, which may often result as potential threats to global security:

• Demography. Population growth and change across the globe will swiftly change the world we knew. The challenge this poses for welfare, good governance and energy security (among other things) is vast.

• Climate change. This greatly threatens physical certainty, and is leading to a whole new type of politics – one predicated, perhaps more than ever, on our collective future.

• Energy security continues to absorb us. The supply and demand of individual nations and the weakening of the international market infrastructure for energy distribution make the situation more precarious than ever.

• There is also the more philosophic problem of the rise of the irrational – the discounting of the rational. Though seemingly abstract, this problem is demonstrated in deeply practical ways. These include the decline of respect for logical argument and evidence, a drift away from science in a civilization that is deeply technological. The ultimate example is the rise of religious fundamentalism, which, as political fanaticism, presents itself as the only source of certainty.

• The weakening of the nation state. This coincides with the weakening of world institutions, including the United Nations and regional organizations such as the European Union, NATO and others.

• The dark side of globalization … These include internationalized terrorism, organized crime and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, but also asymmetric threats from proxy actors or the abuse of financial and energy leverage. (Ibid)

Deterrence and Pre-emption

According to the Report, a new concept of deterrence is required directed against both State and non-state actors, This “new deterrence” is based on pre-emption as well as on the ability to “restore deterrence through military escalation”. In this context, the Report contemplates, what it describes as:

“escalation dominance, the use of a full bag of both carrots and sticks—and indeed all instruments of soft and hard power, ranging from the diplomatic protest to nuclear weapons.” (Report, op city, emphasis added).

Iran

In much the same terms as the Bush administration, the NATO sponsored report states, without evidence, that Iran constitutes “a major strategic threat”:

“An Iranian nuclear weapons capability would pose a major strategic threat – not only to Israel, which it has threatened to destroy, but also to the region as a whole, to Europe and to the United States. Secondly, it could be the beginning of a new multi-polar nuclear arms race in the most volatile region of the world.” (Report, op. cit., p. 45)

Careful timing? The controversial NATO sponsored report calling for a preemptive nuclear attack on Iran was released shortly after the publication of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report entitled Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. The latter denies Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The NIE report, based on the assessments of sixteen US intelligence agencies, refutes the Bush administration’s main justification for waging a preemptive nuclear war on Iran. The NIE report confirms that Iran “halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.”

“These findings constitute a damning indictment of the Bush administration’s relentless fear-mongering in relation to an alleged nuclear threat from Iran. They demonstrate that just as in the buildup to the war against Iraq five years ago, the White House has been engaged in a systematic campaign to drag the American people into another war based on lies.” (See Bill van Auken, 24 January 2008)

It should be noted that this recently declassified intelligence ( pertaining to Iran contained in the 2007 NIE report) was known by the White House, the Pentagon and most probably NATO since September 2003. Ironically, US military documents confirm that the Bush Administration initiated its war preparations against Iran in July 2003, two months prior to the confirmation by US intelligence that Iran did not constitute a nuclear threat.

The July 2003 war scenarios were launched under TIRANNT: Theater Iran Near Term.

The justification for TIRANNT as well as for subsequent US war plans directed against Iran ( which as of 2004 included the active participation of NATO and Israel), has always been that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and plans to use them against us.

Following the publication of the 2007 NIE in early December, there has been an avalanche of media propaganda directed against Tehran, essentially with a view to invalidating the statements of the NIE concerning Tehran’s nuclear program.

Moreover, a third sanctions resolution by the UN Security Council, was initiated with a view to forcing Iran to halt uranium enrichment. The proposed UNSC resolution, which is opposed by China and Russia includes a travel ban on Iranian officials involved in the country’s nuclear programs, and inspections of shipments to and from Iran “if there are suspicions of prohibited goods” (AFP, 11 February 2008). Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy together with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have been calling for a unified EU sanctions regime against Iran.

Contradicting the US national intelligence estimate (NIE), Bush’s most recent speeches continue to portray Iran as a nuclear threat:

“I feel pretty good about making sure that we keep the pressure on Iran to pressure them so they understand they’re isolated, to pressure them to affect their economy, to pressure them to the point that we hope somebody rational shows up and says, okay, it’s not worth it anymore,” Bush said.

Threat to “The Western Way of Life”

The Western media is involved in a diabolical disinformation campaign, the purpose of which is to persuade public opinion that the only way to “create a nuclear free World” is to use nuclear weapons on a preemptive basis, against countries which “threaten our Western Way of Life.”

The Western world is threatened. The NATO report, according to Paul Dibb: “paint(s) an alarming picture of the threats confronting the West, arguing that its values and way of life are under threat and that we are struggling to summon the will to defend them.”(Dibb, op cit)

A preemptive nuclear attack — geographically confined to Middle East (minus Israel?)– is the proposed end-game. The attack would use US tactical nuclear weapons, which, according to “scientific opinion” (on contract to the Pentagon) are “harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground”. (See Michel Chossudovsky The Dangers of a Middle East Nuclear Holocaust, Global Research, 17 February 2006)

B61-11 bunker buster bombs with nuclear warheads Made in America, with an explosive capacity between one third to six times a Hiroshima bomb, are presented as bona fide humanitarian bombs, which minimize the dangers of “collateral damage”.

These in-house “scientific” Pentagon assessments regarding the mini-nukes are refuted by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS):

Any attempt to use a B61-11 bunker buster nuclear bomb in an urban environment would result in massive civilian casualties. Even at the low end of its 0.3-300 kiloton yield range, the nuclear blast will simply blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area ” (Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons by Robert W. Nelson, Federation of American Scientists, 2001 ).

Professor Paul Dibb is a former Australian Deputy Secretary of Defense., who has over the years also occupied key positions in Australia’s defense and intelligence establishment. Dibb carefully overlooks the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons in a conventional war theater. According to Dibb, NATO preemptive nuclear doctrine, which replicates that of the Pentagon, constitutes a significant and positive initiative to “halt the imminent spread of nuclear weapons”. .

“They the group believe that the West must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the imminent spread of nuclear weapons.”

Never mind the nuclear holocaust and resulting radioactive contamination, which would spread Worldwide and threaten, in a real sense, the “way of life”.

There is no “way of life” in a World contaminated with deadly radioactive material. But this is something that is rarely discussed in the corridors of NATO or in strategic studies programs in Western universities.

Nukes: Just Another Tool in the Military Toolbox

What is frightening in Professor Dibb’s article is that he is not expressing an opinion, nor is he analyzing the use of nuclear weapons from an academic research point of view.

In his article, there is neither research on nuclear weapons nor is there an understanding of the complex geopolitics of the Middle East war. Dibb is essentially repeating verbatim the statements contained in NATO/Pentagon military documents. His article is a “copy and paste” summary of Western nuclear doctrine, which in practice calls for the launching of a nuclear holocaust.

The stated objective of a Middle East nuclear holocaust is “to prevent the occurrence of a nuclear war”. An insidious logic which certainly out- dwarfs the darkest period of the Spanish inquisition…

Neither NATO nor the Pentagon use the term nuclear holocaust. Moreover, they presume that the “collateral damage” of a nuclear war will in any event be confined geographically to the Middle East and that Westerners will be spared…

But since their in-house scientists have confirmed that tactical nuclear weapons are “safe for civilians”, the labels on the bombs have been switched much in the same way as the label on a packet of cigarettes: “This nuclear bomb is safe for civilians”

The new definition of a nuclear warhead has blurred the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons:

‘It’s a package (of nuclear and conventional weapons). The implication of this obviously is that nuclear weapons are being brought down from a special category of being a last resort, or sort of the ultimate weapon, to being just another tool in the toolbox,” (Japan Economic News Wire, op cit)

This re-categorization has been carried out. The ” green light” for the use of tactical nuclear weapons has been granted by the US Congress. . ” Let’s use them, they are part of the military toolbox.”

We are a dangerous crossroads: military planners believe their own propaganda. The military manuals state that this new generation of nuclear weapons are “safe” for use in the battlefield. They are no longer a weapon of last resort. There are no impediments or political obstacles to their use. In this context, Senator Edward Kennedy has accused the Bush Administration for having developed “a generation of more useable nuclear weapons.”

Russia and China

Who else constitutes a threat to ” the Western way of life”?

Nukes are also slated to be used against Russia and China, former enemies of the Cold War era.

This post Cold War logic was first revealed, when the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) was leaked to The Los Angeles Times in January 2002. The NPR includes China and Russia alongside the rogue states as potential targets for a first strike nuclear attack. According to William Arkin, the NPR “offers a chilling glimpse into the world of nuclear-war planners: With a Strangelovian genius, they cover every conceivable circumstance in which the president might wish to use nuclear weapons-planning in great detail.” (Los Angeles Times, March 10, 2002)

“Decapitate Their Leadership and Destroy their Countries as Functioning Societies”

The use of nukes against “rogue states”, including Iran and North Korea (which lost more than a quarter of its population in US bombings during the Korean war) is justified because these countries could act in an “irrational” way. It therefore makes sense to “take em out” before they do something irrational. The objective is: “decapitate their leadership and destroy their countries as functioning societies”:

“One line of reasoning is that so-called rogue states, such as Iran and North Korea, are sufficiently irrational to risk a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US or its allies, such as Israel and South Korea.

The supposition here is that deterrence – that is, threatening the other side with obliteration – no longer works. But even the nasty regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang must know that the US reserves the right to use its overwhelming nuclear force to decapitate the leadership and destroy their countries as modern functioning societies. (Dibb, op cit., emphasis added)

Use nuclear weapons to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.

But of course, lest we forget, America’s nuclear arsenal as well as that of France, Britain and Israel are not categorized as “weapons of mass destruction”, in comparison with Iran’s deadly nonexistent nuclear weapons program.

Bin Laden’s Nuclear Program

Now comes the authoritative part of the NATO sponsored report: We need to use nukes against bin Laden, because Islamic “fanatics” can actually make a nuclear weapons or buy them from the Russians in the black market.

The Report calls for a first strike nuclear attack directed against Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, which has the ability, according to expert opinion, of actually producing small nuclear bombs, which could be used in a Second 9/11 attack on America: .

The second line of reasoning contained in the NATO sponsored report is more difficult to refute. It argues that extreme fanatical terrorists, such as al-Qaeda, cannot be deterred because (a) they do not represent a country and therefore cannot be targeted and (b) they welcome death by suicide. So, we have to shift the concept of nuclear deterrence to the country or regime supplying the terrorists with fissile material.

Nuclear weapons require materials that can be made only with difficulty. Once these materials are obtained by terrorists, however, the barriers to fabricating a weapon are much lower. In that sense the nuclear threat today is greater than it was in the Cold War and it seems the terrorists cannot be deterred.( Dibb, op cit, emphasis added)

The alleged nuclear threat by Al Qaeda is taken very seriously. The Bush administration has responded with overall defense spending (budget plus war theater) in excess of one trillion dollars. This massive amount of public money has been allocated to financing the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT).

Confirmed by Pentagon documents, this military hardware including aircraft carriers, fighter jets, cruise missiles and nuclear bunker buster bombs, is slated to be used as part of the “Global War on Terrorism”. In military jargon the US is involved in asymmetric warfare against non-State enemies. (The concept of Asymmetric Warfare was defined in The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (2005)

“The American Hiroshima”

The US media has the distinct ability to turn realities upside down. The lies are upheld as indelible truths. The “Islamic terrorists” have abandoned their AK 47 kalashnikov rifles and stinger missiles; they are not only developing deadly chemical and biological weapons, they also have nuclear capabilities.

The fact, amply documented, that Al Qaeda is supported by the CIA and Britain’s MI6 is beside the point.

The nuclear threat is not directed against the Middle East but against the USA, the perpetrators and architects of nuclear war are bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, which is planning to launch a nuclear attack on an American city:

“U.S. government officials are contemplating what they consider to be an inevitable and much bigger assault on America, one likely to kill millions, destroy the economy and fundamentally alter the course of history,…

According to captured al-Qaida leaders and documents, the plan is called the “American Hiroshima” and involves the multiple detonation of nuclear weapons already smuggled into the U.S. over the Mexican border with the help of the MS-13 street gang and other organized crime groups. (World Net Daily, 11 July 2005, emphasis added)

The New York Times confirms that an Al Qaeda sponsored “American Hiroshima” “could happen” .

“Experts believe that such an attack, somewhere, is likely.” (NYT, 11 August 2004)

According to the Aspen Strategy Group which is integrated among others, by Madeleine Albright, Richard Armitage, Philip D. Zelikow, Robert B. Zoellick, “the danger of nuclear terrorism is much greater than the public believes, and our government hasn’t done nearly enough to reduce it.”:

If a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon, a midget even smaller than the one that destroyed Hiroshima, exploded in Times Square, the fireball would reach tens of millions of degrees Fahrenheit. It would vaporize or destroy the theater district, Madison Square Garden, the Empire State Building, Grand Central Terminal and Carnegie Hall (along with me and my building). The blast would partly destroy a much larger area, including the United Nations. On a weekday some 500,000 people would be killed. (NYT, 11 August 2004)

“Threaten them with a devastating nuclear attack”

According to professor Dibb, nuclear deterrence should also apply in relation to Al Qaeda, by holding responsible the governments which help the terrorists to develop their nuclear weapons capabilities:

“Ashton Carter, a former US assistant secretary for defense, has recently argued, the realistic response is to hold responsible, as appropriate, the government from which the terrorists obtained the weapon or fissile materials and threaten them with a devastating nuclear strike. In other words, deterrence would work again. (Dibb, op cit)

The real nuclear threat is coming from bin Laden. The objective is to “to do away with our way of life”:

None of this is to underestimate the impact of a nuclear weapon being detonated in an American city. It could be catastrophic, but it is highly unlikely to threaten the very survival of the US. To believe otherwise risks surrendering to the fear and intimidation that is precisely the terrorists’ stock in trade.

General Richard Myers, another former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has claimed that if Islamic terrorists were able to kill 10,000 Americans in a nuclear attack, they would “do away with our way of life”. But Hiroshima and Nagasaki incurred well over 100,000 instant deaths and that did not mean the end of the Japanese way of life. (Ibid, emphasis added)

In an utterly twisted and convoluted argument, professor Dibb transforms the US-NATO threat to wage a nuclear war on Iran into an Al Qaeda operation to attack an American city with nuclear weapon.

Dibb presents the US-NATO menace to trigger what would result in a Middle East nuclear holocaust as a humanitarian operation to save American lives. By implication, the Al Qaeda sponsored “American Hiroshima” would be supported by Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. and this in turn would immediately provide a juste cause (casus belli) for retaliation against Iran

“What a nuclear attack on a US city would mean, however, is an understandable American retaliation in kind. So, those countries that have slack control over their fissile nuclear materials and cozy relations with terrorists need to watch out. A wounded America would be under enormous pressure to respond in a wholly disproportionate manner.

And then we would be in a completely changed strategic situation in which the use of nuclear weapons might become commonplace. Ibid, emphasis added).

Dick Cheney’s Second 9/11

The insinuation that Al Qaeda is preparing an attack on America has been on the lips of Vice President Dick Cheney for several years now. Cheney has stated on several occasions since 2004, that Al Qaeda is preparing a “Second 9/11″: .

In August 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney is reported to have instructed USSTRATCOM, based at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, to draw up a “Contingency Plan”, “to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States”. (Philip Giraldi, Attack on Iran: Pre-emptive Nuclear War, The American Conservative, 2 August 2005)

Dick Cheney’s “Contingency Plan” was predicated on the preemptive war doctrine. Implied in the “Contingency Plan” was the presumption that Iran would be behind the attacks.

The Pentagon in a parallel initiative has actually fine-tuned its military agenda to the point of actually envisaging a Second 9/11 scenario as a means to providing the US administration with a “credible” justification to attack Iran and Syria:

“Another 9/11 type terrorist attack could create both a justification and an opportunity that is lacking today to retaliate against some known targets Iran and Syria” (Statement by Pentagon official, leaked to the Washington Post, 23 April 2006, emphasis added)

Meanwhile,. the US Congress is concerned that an “American Hiroshima” could potentially damage the US economy:

“What we do know is that our enemies want to inflict massive casualties and that terrorists have the expertise to invent a wide range of attacks, including those involving the use of chemical, biological, radiological and even nuclear weapons. … Exploding a small nuclear weapon in a major city could do incalculable harm to hundreds of thousands of people, as well as to businesses and the economy,…(US Congress, House Financial Services Committee, June 21, 2007).

As far as sensitizing public opinion to the dangers of US sponsored nuclear war, there is, with a few exceptions, a scientific and intellectual vacuum: No research, no analysis, no comprehension of the meaning of a nuclear holocaust which in a real sense threatens the future of humanity. This detachment and lack of concern of prominent intellectuals characterizes an evolving trend in many universities and research institutes in the strategic studies, the sciences and social sciences.

Academics increasingly tow the line. They remain mum on the issue of a US sponsored nuclear war. There is a tacit acceptance of a diabolical and criminal military agenda, which in a very sense threatens life on this planet. The US-NATO doctrine to use nukes on a preemptive basis with a view to “saving the Western World’s way of life” is not challenged in any meaningful way either by academics or media experts in strategic studies.

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Four turboprop Tupolev-95 Bear bombers took off from Ukrainka air base, in Russia’s Far East, in the middle of the night, Japanese officials told The Associated Press, adding that one of the jets violated Japanese airspace.

Russian bombers have been making flights over the western Pacific for several months. In September, two U.S. F-15 fighters scrambled to intercept a plane that came within 50 miles of the coastline.

There have been eight incidents off Alaska since July. Among the latest, on September 5, six F-15s from Elmendorf Air Force Base, adjacent to Anchorage, Alaska, intercepted six Russian bombers about 50 miles from the northwest coast of Alaska.

Two similar incidents occurred in August, one near Cape Lisburne, Alaska, and the other near Cold Bay, Alaska, west of the Aleutian Islands.

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The Russian bombers were launched from Ukrainka air base in Russia’s Far East.

Interceptions of combat aircraft were a common occurrence during the Cold War, but became a rarity when Russia abandoned permanent long-range patrol flights after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The last such incident was in July 2004, when a Bear bomber buzzed the USS Kitty Hawk in the Sea of Japan.

Russia resumed strategic bomber patrol flights over the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic oceans last August, following an order signed by President Vladimir Putin. The move was widely seen as a sign of Russia’s increasingly aggressive military stance.

In addition to Russia’s opposition to U.S. plans to deploy 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic, relations between the countries have been strained by Russia’s decision late last year to impose a unilateral moratorium on the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, a key arms reduction pact, as well as by NATO’s expansion into the former Eastern Bloc.

In a speech last Friday, President Putin blamed the West for unleashing a new international arms race.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080212/98987647.html

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Comment :

It’s as funny as the US satellite now on its way through the atmo burning itself up. When’s it due to crash? This is the US? It’s all about crashes and collapses and shocks and surprises.

It’s as funny as the US F-22 debacle. Sang as the Suchoj equivalent, at last anyway, when rolled out and tested it failed every test. It flies worse than SU and than planned. It’s still incapable of the famed and envied ‘cobra’ manoeuvre. And despite its stealth tag, its visible on a regular radar, not to mention VERA-type radars now commonplace everywhere in the Freeworld. The only record this yet another US engineering disaster broke was its tag price. Australia and Britzies moaned at the outrageous cost of the ridiculous flyer that failed to at least shorten the lag behind Russia and at one point both refused to fulfill their pre-manufacturing obligation of buying the damn plane. Both were of course forced into compliance and loaded on the most expensive and most useless jet fighter to date.

The greatest mightiest military being decimated in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The US has attacked 68 nations since WWII and murdered since WWII some 25-30M civilians.

If the west needs to attack someone with a gun, it needs to build a proxy, shower it with gifts, steal the election for it, and arm it and sic it on the west target. And today, this is Czechopoland and Georgia, as it appears. It’s possibly also Colombia against President Hugo Chavez.