Mar 28 2008
Terrorists Get Their Hands On Uranium For Dirty Bomb
Major Update: US says depleted uranium not useful as a dirty bomb. But the real question is whether that is all that FARC had in their possession? And it not for a dirty bomb what else is it good for (yes, I know it is great for armor piercing shells). What other reason would FARC have for obtaining this material? – End Update
Boy, I sure hope the NSA is able to listen in on the terrorists here in the Americas (since Congress has crippled their ability to follow new leads since they have not renewed the FISA statutes that have been protecting this country extremely well since 9-11) because we now have proof terrorists got their hands on a lot of uranium – perfect for building a lot of dirty bombs:
Colombia’s FARC rebels may have intended to use low-grade uranium in a “dirty bomb” to bill themselves as international terrorists, the government said Thursday after announcing it found a stash of the radioactive material.
The Colombian Defense Ministry said 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of uranium were found along a roadside in a Bogota slum after two rebels tipped authorities to their whereabouts. On Tuesday, a laboratory said a sample it analyzed was depleted uranium.
The find confirmed earlier government reports that the rebels were looking to buy uranium, after computer files seized in a rebel camp inside Ecuador yielded messages to that effect. The files were captured in a Colombian cross-border raid on March 1.
Armed with the computer evidence, Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos, a few days later at the UN Disarmament Conference in Geneva, accused the rebel group of seeking radioactive material “to make dirty weapons to destroy and terrorize.”
This is the same group which had (a) links to madman Hugo Chavez and (b) some crazy and vague connections to Oback Obama. The best spin on the latter point would be naive liberals playing out of their league with the most dangerous nut cases on the planet. That is pretty bad, but it could be a lot worse.
What if FARC and al-Qaeda are teamed up? If that were to be the case the discovery of nuclear weapons material would be a grave threat to the United States. And apparently that may just be the case:
Colombian authorities claim to have dismantled an extensive counterfeit passport ring in January 2006 that allegedly supplied an unknown number of Pakistanis, Egyptians, Jordanians, Iraqis, and others purported to be working with al-Qaeda with Colombian, Portuguese, German, and Spanish citizenship, enabling them to travel freely in the United States and Europe. Bogota also mentioned that the network had ties to Hamas militants (al-Hayat, January 28; Caracol Radio, January 26).
In contrast, U.S. Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security officials expressed surprise at Bogota’s announcement while emphatically disputing its claim, alleging that they had no knowledge of known links between the document forgery operation and any brand of Islamist terrorism, let alone al-Qaeda. Instead, they acknowledged that the sting operation involved Colombians posing as members of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country’s largest and most powerful rebel group, interested in purchasing forged documents and possibly even weapons (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Report, January 27). Washington classifies FARC as an international terrorist organization.
These are very scary dots to see possibly connecting. Terrorist organizations will exploit any arrangements they need to in order to inflict their bloody message on their adversaries. What is clear is we now have proof of terrorists in possession of dangerous nuclear materials. Now is not the time to be blinding our national security defenses by holding up legislation in Congress. It is time Congress allowed our security forces the full range of options to stop another terrorist attack and stop playing to the delusional and paranoid fantasies that they are somehow under surveillance as the political opposition to the current administration – which has all it can handle stopping things like uranium blowing up in a major US city.
AJ,
Related…
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/28/colombia-found-something-more-dangerous-than-uranium/
I would guess that FARC didn’t know it wasn’t particularly useful – living in the jungle and shipping cocaine doesn’t require or produce people who are very technologically literate. It would be pretty funny if they got conned out of a good chunk of change by someone who convinced them it was truly deadly, and the more I think about it the more I think that’s what happened.
And we better hope it’s pretty useless (minus any kinetic energy) since we spray the stuff around battlefields like it’s confetti.
No wall needed at the Southern Border.. Nope… It’s just harmless poor Mexicans down there and nothing else. It’s racist. It’s cold-hearted.
Nothing else to worry about. Just put up some cameras.
I sure hope that the woman you posted on below didn’t
wear “depleted uranium”.
Maybe things are different where you live, AJ, but the older TSA agents here are pretty much people who couldn’t get jobs anywhere else.
For someone young it is probably a great starting job because TSA will train and it doesn’t take a lot of previous experience. For someone in their 40’s, you have to wonder.
It is kinda like a fast food establishment, it is a great place for a younger person to get some experience holding a job and getting the basics of showing up to work, having a work schedule … etc. But when you see someone in their 30’s or 40’s in there, you start to wonder a little. Particularly when the economy is actually pretty good as it is in my region.
Crosspatch, what are you talking about?
Vince, Columbia is not Mexico. (check out a map)
And almost everything that is smuggled in to this country from Columbia comes in through Florida, unless it’s in a plane going to some out of the way place like Mena, Arkansas. (just ask the DEA)
Are you going to run the wall along 10,000 miles of beach, right at water’s edge? And how about a giant plastic dome over the entire country to cut off all those private flights that come in under the radar?
Who knows how many billion dollars the proposed mexican wall would cost – and yet that wall won’t delay a single shipment of whatever even a single hour. There’s a million ways to beat it, for both people and for contraband.
WWS,
“And almost everything that is smuggled in to this country from Columbia comes in through Florida, unless it’s in a plane going to some out of the way place like Mena, Arkansas. (just ask the DEA)”
As long as you’re positive…No chance of it coming through the southern border so by all means, let’s not do anything about it…
Millions? If it’s good enough for the drug smugglers why not for a dirty bomb? http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/agency/staffing.htm
Wow WWS.. What a great statement you made. I HAD NO IDEA COLUMBIA WAS FURTHER SOUTH THAN MEXICO. Thank you!
Thank you so much.
Ever hear of OTM’s? “Other than Mexicans”.. That’s right… there are so many people crossing the souther border illegally who are NOT Mexcian that they had to invent a term for them.
But you in all your wisdom, I’m sure you knew this, right?
Here are some numbers:
http://bsimmons.wordpress.com/2006/11/01/confronting-the-threat-at-the-southwest-border/
OTMs who were CAUGHT:
FY2003 – 30,147
FY2004 – 44,614
FY2005 – 165,178
FY2006 – 108,025 (as of Nov 2006)
I can’t find more recent stats.
So do you get that? Hundreds of thousands of people crossing the Mexican border who ARE NOT Mexican. Hmmm.. I wonder how they got there? Hmmm.. I wonder if anyone in Columbia is aware of this. Hmmm.. I wonder if I can be like WWS and ignorantly spout nonsene.
Anyone who is against a border barrier is a fool.
AJ
From what I have read on this issue , and I will have to look into it a bit deeper, sounds like something else is going on here.
To me I am reading it as they are simply trying to get into the black market uranium business as a source of funds.
Have you priced a pound of uranium lately? It’s holding near record levels on the world market right now.
This stuff they got is very low grade and contaminated. It sounds almost like someone trying to sell you a substitute for a pound of Mary Jane.
The FARC guys didn’t likely have the tech to check out what they were getting beyond a simple radiation detector.
Vince,
All those against a border fence claim it can’t be done. Granted, it’s certainly not a small task but it could be done…after all the typical arguments they say it just wouldn’t be effective.
I wonder if the East German’s would agree with them? And we wouldn’t be trying to keep people in but keep people out. Of course the Berlin Wall was only a little over 90 miles long but certainly the country that can put a man on the moon can build a fence don’t ya think?
It’s simple to build this stupid thing.
Have each county arrange the construction and it could be done in 6 months.
I think some people are dumb enough to think there would be one crew who would build the entire thing
Oh yes, Whippet, the East German heirs of Hitler and Stalin are definitely the one government on this planet that we should be emulating.
Next up – concentration camps for 12 million? Sieg Heil, Baby!
Vince, I think we can all agree on our anxiety of how many are crossing our borders and what their intentions are. It is a very complicated situation, imho. I, as you, want to get a tight handle on what is going on at the border…however, as I have posted before, I don’t think the wall is our answer as I think it is a false sense of security and I just don’t like the image of America fortified with bricks and guns like the Germans. Imho, the terrorists have won if we go that route. I much prefer surveillance, technology and an immigration department that can FUNCTION. It is ridiculous today how inept the department is.
If we can pinpoint buildings to bomb we can certainly monitor the border…and who’s to say we aren’t doing that now? But again, I share your concerns totally.
I disagree it provides a “false sense of security”, it merely makes it that much more difficult to get in.
Anythign that could be done to stem the tide of the illegal masses should be done.
Do you really expect this government to be able to competently manage some bizarre “virtual fence” thing?
And no offense, but I dont think it’s worth risking allowing the worst kinds of weapons to be smuggled into the country because you dont like the fact there’s a physical barrier.
The terrorists have won NOTHING by erecting a barrier.
Ask the people of San Diego if the terrorists won when they erected a wall between them and Mexico.
I find your demand of 100% perfect or bust to be totally unrealistic.
WWS,
Since I’m sure that you knew I wasn’t suggesting that the US emulate East Germany and the Berlin Wall and that I made simple differences between what we are trying to do vs. what the East Germans were doing I can only assume that you needed to deflect from my comment rather than address it. Twisting someone’s words to mean something entirely different is a cheap shot.
But if you can pull your head out of the sand long enough to read the attached article you may begin to understand why those who live in border states take these issues more seriously than those who don’t.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/yahoolatestnews/stories/033008dninttrainingcamps.1836949.html?npc
Lets not forget the beheadings that are going on in Mexico too.. but yeah.. lets not build a war and keep these barbarians out. Let them come to our country and create chaos here. Why? Who knows… I guess we have to protect the precious Leftist’s sensiblities.. meanwhile we’ll turn our urban areas into afghanistan.
http://www.stratfor.com/beheadings_mexico_foreign_element_mexicos_drug_wars
The main fronts in the war are Nuevo Laredo and Tijuana, both on the U.S. border. In those cities, police officials have been killed, rival gangs have fought each other with heavy weapons, and U.S. citizens have gone missing. In recent months, however, Acapulco has become increasingly violent as the fighting spreads.
Though killing police officers is not uncommon in Mexico, beheading them is. Mexican gangs have used guns, knives and even grenades and heavy machine guns against the police and each other. Decapitating victims, however, is more consistent with methods used by groups originating in Central America or South America. In parts of El Salvador, Guatemala and other countries south of Mexico, fighting with machetes is taught to boys by their fathers. In South America, Peru’s notorious Shining Path militant group often beheaded its victims (among other things). The decidedly “southern” tactic seen in Aguaje and Acapulco indicates that a foreign element has been added to the Mexican cartel wars. It is likely that a gang or cartel operating in the states of Guerrero and Michoacan has brought in other enforcers from Central or South America, possibly former militants or members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang.
Vince,
I don’t know if you live in a border state or not but I think some people aren’t able to grasp the seriousness of a problem unless it affects them personally. It’s a shame that many people are that way but for those who do live in border states the situation is getting increasingly more alarming. Stories like those linked along with crimes by illegals are seen here on a daily basis. It’s become commonplace. Once commonplace in the border states it won’t be long before it’s commonplace everywhere…That will be when more people take notice and when it will be too late…
I’m in Chicago. So I have no idea what it’s like day-to-day down there but I hear it isn’t pretty.
We dont live in an abstract live.. We live in the real world.. and in the real world there hundreds of thousands or even millions trying to storm across the wide-open border a year.
Our country will be swamped by this wave if it’s not stopped. The Federal Govt is too incompetent to run a system that rquires people , a barrier must be built to stem the tide and it needs to be built now.
The problem that bothers me is that terrorists with weapons can get in here legally. A fence won’t stop that. It would, imho, lower our guard…
And we haven’t had any attacks come from those who came across the border after 200 years…I just am trying to be practical and pragmatic. And our border is HUGE…not sure we can be “invulnerable”.
Regardless, we all want to be safe. I have two beautiful grandchildren and I want them to be safe now and as long as they live. And I can tell you this, allowing Obama or Hillary or Gore into the White House will make the border issue a picnic compared to what they will do to our sovereignty…think International Criminal Court just as a starter.
Uggggh. I detest these people.