Watch out for loose nukes!

A few days after the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998 – which killed 257 people, including 12 Americans – President Clinton launched a few dozen unmanned cruise missiles against several sites in Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. The missile strikes – which were ineffective – were touted to be both retaliatory and preventative.

“Our mission was clear – to strike at the network of radical groups affiliated with, and funded by, Osama bin Laden, the preeminent organizer and financier of international terrorism in the world today,” Clinton said.

Now, a few days after the destruction of the World Trade Center by suicidal jetliner pilots, there are those who are demanding that President Bush attack – even invade – Afghanistan, which continues to harbor bin Laden, and every country that continues to harbor the network of terrorist cells bin Laden is alleged to control. Like Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Algeria, Chechnya, Palestine, Yemen, UAR, Albania … the list goes on.

The problem is that terrorists like Ahmed Yousef – the leader of the cell that carried out the February 26, 1993, World Trade Center truck bombing – may never have been in Afghanistan, nor have ever met bin Laden. In fact, before the bombing, Yousef lived for some time in Jersey City, New Jersey, with fellow bomber Mohamed Salameh.

Yousef, who initially escaped, was later captured in the Philippines, and returned to the US. Newsbreak has published excerpts from what it claims is a secret 1995 FBI report entitled, “Ramzi Ahmed Yousef: A New Generation of Sunni Islamic Terrorists.” The report was supposedly obtained from Philippine government sources.

Those involved in the (WTC) bombing (in 1993) and a second group of extremists who plotted to bomb other landmarks in New York City, including the United Nations building, did not belong to a single, cohesive organization, but rather were part of a loose group of politically motivated Muslims living in the area.

The WTC bombing in 1993 clearly demonstrates Yousef’s ability to enter the United States, establish a support structure, recruit a terrorist team, and successfully carry out an attack. Yousef is able to use his friends and associates in foreign countries to identify possible targets. Yousef and Murad also discussed future attacks in the U.S., including possibly flying a plane with explosives into the CIA building.

What was true for the original World Trade Center terrorists is evidently proving to be even more true for the half-dozen Islamic suicide squads who destroyed the World Trade Center last week and severely damaged the Pentagon, which is a few miles down the Potomac from CIA Headquarters.

Many of these Islamic terrorists appear to have been members of well-to-do Egyptian and Saudi families, and had spent the last several years here in the United States, learning to fly at U.S. flight-training academies, earning frequent-flyer miles on U.S. airliners, ogling nude dancers at sports bars, working out at the gym and practicing martial arts.

Until September 11th, most Americans supposed that wild-eyed Islamic terrorists did indeed live in tents. They never suspected that apparently level-headed Islamic pilots could deliberately put airliners full of passengers into suicidal dives. But that’s exactly what many aviation professionals are convinced EgyptAir co-pilot Gamil Al-Batuti did on October 31, 1999.

On the basis of cockpit voice and flight data recordings, investigators concluded that, as soon as he was alone in the cockpit – on autopilot at 33,000 feet out of JFK airport – Al-Batuti, intoning an Islamic prayer, shut off the autopilot and put the Boeing 767 into a steep dive. Seconds later the captain came rushing back into the cockpit and cried, “What’s going on? Pull up! Pull up!”. Al-Batuti and the captain fought over the controls, and the captain temporarily won. But then Al-Batuti apparently shut off both engines and the plane went into another steep dive. Finally, approaching the sonic barrier, it broke up in midair and crashed into the ocean off Nantucket Island, killing all 217 souls aboard.

Al-Batuti had joined Egypt Air in 1987, logged more than 5,000 flight hours in Boeing 767s – the same type of plane hijacked and deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by the Islamic suicide squads – and was due to retire in March, 2000. Although never an Egypt Air captain, he was reported to have been an instructor pilot for Egypt Air and, earlier, for the Egyptian Air Force. He had been married for 27 years, had five children and had probably never spent a single night in a tent in Afghanistan.

The theme of this column is that the potential Islamic terrorists we have to worry about are not living in tents in Afghanistan. Those guys and their camels may well be a threat to the bordering countries of Pakistan, Russia and Iran – and we need to help those countries reduce the threat of Islamic terrorism against them. But the guys we have to worry about here in the United States are those in Pakistan or India or even Chechnya where the opportunity exists – or may soon exist – for prying nukes loose.

For example, Pakistan is estimated to have two to three dozen U-235 bombs, the kind dropped on Hiroshima. Pakistan’s government is highly unstable. Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in a military coup in October 1999, has just named himself president while remaining head of Pakistan’s army. Although Musharraf says he is on our side, there is considerable support in Pakistan for Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban. If we attack or invade Afghanistan from Pakistan, we run the very real risk of causing Musharraf’s government to fall, which could easily result in the Taliban – or equally radical elements in Pakistan – acquiring two to three dozen nukes.

That could, in turn, cause the Indians to launch preemptive nuke strikes on Pakistan.

Fortunately for us, President Bush isn’t trying to take our minds off another Monica Lewinsky scandal, so he is not going to launch a few dozen cruise missiles to wipe out a few unoccupied 10-dollar tents. He apparently realizes that hasty or ill-considered action on his part, now, could eventually result in the first war of the 21st century being a nuclear war. Hence, the president’s first order of business should be to get with President Putin, and in cooperation with the Indians and Pakistanis, defuse the loose-nuke problem. If he and Putin can’t do that, then the next horrible scene on your TV screen may be a mushroom-shaped cloud over our nation’s Capital.