do you believe a nuclear weapon will be used in your lifetime?

Serious answer -- I wouldn't rule it out, but I'm hardly looking forward to the prospect, and I have no idea who would use it.

We'll also eventually see a single act of terrorism that will take tens of thousands of lives, as opposed to hundreds or thousands. I think that this could even happen within the next ten years, likely because of a nuclear weapon.

Bunker-busting nuclear weapons are a type of nuclear weapon which are designed to penetrate into soil, rock or concrete to deliver a nuclear warhead. These weapons would be used to destroy hardened, underground military bunkers buried deep in the ground. These weapons would in theory diminish the amount of radioactive nuclear fallout by reducing the yield of the warhead required to attack a particular target. Warhead yield and weapon design has changed periodically throughout the history of the design of such weapons.

Getting into semantics here, but if North Korea hits Honolulu, I'm not going to call it terrorism. No more than Pearl Harbor was terrorism.

Tracer otm, although I guess it's remotely possible that one will be used in an Actual War on a military target, which I wouldn't classify as terrorism (but still horrible, as all war is). xpst

"Terrorists", no chance.

But I'm defining the word as "People who blow shit up and don't wear uniforms."

of course they are nuclear weapons. My point is that yes, sadly, they will be used many times during my lifetime.

My bit in quotes is like how PP defines it.

BLITZKRIEG DUDE

i'm confused about the avidity for making this distinction between nuclear bunker busters, non-nuclear bunker busters, etc - what is at stake here? i just googled "B61-11," the weapon hersh refers to, and it's universally described as a "bunker buster"

Yeah, I know, but if people are anti-bomb it's in their interests to get the specifics right.

I'd qualify that further by saying that the target is non-military and does not pose an immediate threat to your well-being.

sleep: http://mondediplo.com/2002/09/02wedding

chuck: agreed! although i bet the damage is anything but faux

if you're talking about something like 9/11 or 7/7 i'd settle for "mass murder"

The 6th day of the 6th Month of 2006: June 6th 2006 at 6 seconds of the 6 minute past the 6 hour am/pm in a large City on Earth? Maybe PM ?

is Al Qaeda planning anything for this day, we know the significance of numbers to them in the past.

Are British or American Intelligence investigating the possibility of the Number of the Beast: 666?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060411/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_nuclear;_ylt=Ahoz2_v8zZka7oCB7vpOktWs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

uh not to be all morbid, but if your eyelids were cut off, wouldn't your eyes be filled with blood, preventing you from actually seeing anything?

(also hstencil otm about Muslims and dates - the dates they've attacked on before don't have anything to do with stupid Christians and their superstitions.)

haha my favorite part of Martian's post is that he predicts these attacks to occur in "a large City on Earth"

September 11th 2001 WTC 911 = US emergency number

Bali Bombings
October 12, 2002 october 10th month, 12 day = add these numbers up = 22, notice 2002, split these numbers 20 and 02 = 22
also 1 year 1 month and 1 day after 911

Madrid Bombings: 911 days after WTC

facts
"The attacks in Madrid, on 3/11/2004 appear to be connected to the 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. The span of days between the two similarly dated attacks are 911 days."

London Bombings
7/7 = 7th day of the 7 month

related theory: of Numerology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerology
Numerology is the parascience that studies the purported mystical or esoteric relationship between numbers and the character or action of physical objects and living things.

I have to say those were acts of terrorism. The guy who drove his truck into the Luby's cafeteria fifteen years ago was more of a mass murderer.

the rest of that numerology crap you cite is random speculation that, sadly, does not take into account any actual Islamic numerology (of which there is quite a lot, and which is not related to Christian superstitions like the 666 number)

Depends who you ask. For a lot of folks the next significant date is April 19.

Speaking of horseshit, I can't believe that this guy is getting some traction in the conspiracy forums. I'm sure that there is a non-trivial number of people who would believe that the Feds would set-off a nuke in the states as part of some Northwoods-style plan.

McVeigh's first trial attorney, Stephen Jones (attorney), also suggested in his book on the case that Terry Nichols had crossed paths with suspected Islamic terrorists during his frequent visits to the Philippines before the attacks. Nichols' father-in-law at the time was a Philippine police officer who owned an apartment building often rented to Arabic-speaking students with alleged terrorist connections. However, there is no credible evidence of an Islamist link to the Oklahoma City bombings.

Richard A. Clarke speculates on the improvement in Nichols's bomb-making techniques as a possible link to Phillipines-based Islamic militants in Cebu and the southern islands, plus several telephone calls he made there long after he and his wife had come back to the US together, in his 2004 account of the work he undertook for several administrations, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/we-compare.gif

actually this is *exactly* what I'm thinking of too - I think any state action is unlikely, and anything that does happen is more likely than not going to be a fuck-up/accident (the likelihood of which I only see increasing in accordance with the spread of technology and fissionable material which, lets face it, cannot really be stopped).

Is there a military target large enough that a nuclear missile could kill it and leave the nearest civilians alive?

"I formally declare that Iran has joined the club of nuclear countries," he said. The crowd broke into cheers of "Allahu akbar," or "God is great."

As part of the ceremony, costumed dancers performed on the stage, holding aloft vials of raw uranium and also chanting "Allahu akbar."

Maybe, maybe not, but you have to admit there's a certain symbolic power to it that exceeds even the choice of 9/11 targets. Knocking over the symbols of evil western financial power? OK, yeah, terrifying, and an image people will never forget. A mushroom cloud over the White House? 9/11 x 2,356.

OTM. Ms. Atomic Bomb etc.

Maybe. There's probably one remote enough, someplace. Besides, I was talking about the definition of the word "terrorist" in that post, not the nuclear attack thing specifically. Above, I address nuking a military target without civilian loss as "remotely possible" - just a guess, really.

It worries me that there will be another "world war" (we're close to it now I believe) and that someone somewhere will decide to use WMD. It worries me that so many people in the world believe in their gods and their religions so strongly that sacrificing lives for their gods and religions is acceptable. It worries me that anyone can see mass murder/suicide/war as the right thing”, can, and will always find a way to justify it.

it worries me.

sorry tracer, i sympathize with the feeling but i've got to disagree with this characterization.

my maternal grandfather was a geotechnical engineer hired by bechtel (a bay area firm) to work on the shah's karadj dam project. as part of this work, he was able to move his family to the work site, where they were schooled in an american classroom w/ the children of american engineers and staff. my mother (and her two siblings) learned english at a very young age, thanks to bechtel.

my grandfather was able to use some of his work at karadj dam to earn a PhD and later taught at san diego state university and nicholls state university (in southern louisiana). my mother used her fluent english to support herself through college and was offered a scholarship for graduate work at stanford (which she never ended up taking).

after the revolution, my mother's brother and sister both attended college in america - one got a degree in architecture, the other in computer science. although that comes down their own efforts and hard work, if they hadn't grown up speaking english it wouldn't have been possible.

thanks to the shah's efforts, my grandmother's sister attended BYU in the 60s, where she got a masters in clinical psychology. she returned to iran, returned to america before the revolution had ended, got a PhD and has been working as a social worker for child protective services in SD county since the early 80s.

my father's (and his brother's) education was supported by his father, who had a bureacratic job in the phone company - so, his paycheck (and my dad's education) more or less came from ross perot. my father got a job with a branch of caterpillar while in college. when the political situation became untenable, caterpillar arranged for my father (and my mom and I) to move to america, where they later arranged our citizenships.

so i wouldn't say the benefit of all the western investment in iran skipped over the iranians.

and from everythng i know, this is pretty much nonsense. i have never heard ANYONE say anything about SAVAK, and i have lived and moved in expatriate circles pretty much my entire life.

if you really need a way to conceptualize SAVAK, you would probably be better off imagining a more-vicious and gloves-off COINTELPRO. if you didn't want to be harassed by SAVAK, you just had to take some simple steps. don't join a "discussion group", don't join any extremist political organizations.

to carry the COINTELPRO analogy a little bit further, in iran, for every 10 people planning a march or demonstration you had 100 nuts planning to blow up the army math research center (actually, this might not be a bad characterization of people harassed by COINTELPRO). and, don't forget, in iran the political opposition was every bit as vicious as SAVAK. i don't recall SNCC ever burning down a movie theatre full of their own supporters to mobilize the public!

now, i don't want to sound like i'm apologizing for anything SAVAK did, but the idea that iran pre-revolution was some sort of 1984 scenario with a nationwide secret police kidnapping people for criticizing the government is just bonkers. nobody ever got dragged off in the night and had their eyelids cut off for saying "persepolis" was a huge waste of money and xenakis sounds like shit, and as far as i can tell, this was quite a widely held opinion! if you wanted to join groups advocating armed overthrow of the government, though, well, you were on your own buddy.

now i will agree that i am thankful every day that i live in a country that even as an iranian-american i can rattle on and on about armed overthrow of the government on the internet and not get hassled for it ... you won't be arrested and interrogated for joining the communist club or the anarchist society or john birch or whatever and that's great!

but if you want to compare pre-revolution (when you had to be ... judicious about the political organizations you joined and OK the one BIG exception where criticizing the gov't was VERBOTEN and that during your military service and well, no duh, right?) with post-revolution (when my family left iran against their will, despite all the great things iran's association w/ america did for them they never had any intention of packing off for california, because their fucking RELIGION had become a CAPITAL CRIME) then i know which i'd pick.

if they US does use a a nuclear weapon on iran, i hope they hit the council of guardians and i hope it hits ayatollah yazdi square in the forehead.

he may have his own axes to grind, i dunno, but that's what he said. he gets a little poetic sometimes. too much, it sounds like.

In fifteen or so years though, who knows? In a few decades time, thanks to proliferation, Iran probably won't be even the newest power with a nuclear weapon. The chance of border skirmishes along the lines of Pakistan-India in 2001-2 are probably going to increase tremendously. That is definitely worrying -- which is why (IMHO) demonstrating RIGHT NOW in favour of non-proliferation treaties is a much more important cause than demonstrating against, say, President Bush's various idiocies. And of course the US, by continuing to research into nuclear testing and new nuclear weapon designs, is encouraging continued proliferation.

"in a country where the mosque is very much like the local pub"

is great though.

They advocate the finding of entry/exit points to the bunker systems and bombing those instead w/ conventional weapons.

then again, war operations are probably already underway

Very interesting post, vahid (so let me apologize in advance if I take any snarky cheap shots).

I have to say it reminds me very much of Russian friends who similarly insisted that unless you did something really stupid, the chances of having real problems with the KGB were pretty minimal. Sure party membership (or rather, lack thereof) could seriously effect your path in life, but no more than the skill and werewithal to engage in petty corruption.

I have a hard time buying into that totally, but at this point, my sense is that many of these societies that we in the west perceive as wholly oppressed actuallly have a huge silent majority who suffer some specific illiberties, but basically live more or less "normal" lives as long as they play by the rules. When you think about it that way, it casts "enemies" like the USSR or -ahem- Iraq, in a different light.

now i will agree that i am thankful every day that i live in a country that even as an iranian-american i can rattle on and on about armed overthrow of the government and not get hassled for it

and exactly which country are you living in? i guarantee you that it only takes one person thinking you might be serious, and you would end up in a world of trouble.

i live in america, which, contrary to popular belief, has not turned into the fourth reich under republican leadership.

and would you disagree with that characterization?

Corporate media are going wild, tripping over one another, to headline that President Obama is going to rid the world of nuclear weapons. The British Reuters headline is "Obama sets out plan for nuclear-free world."

What a wonderful thing that would be, but this is a cruel hoax... (cont.)