There is no terrorist threat.

[Nicky Scarfo]

Or more accurately, the threat is minimal. I wish more people could recognize this. Appx. 40, 000 people are killed in auto accidents each year. So, in other words, if a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 happened EVERY YEAR (extremely unlikely), most Americans would still, on average, be 13 times more likely to die in a car accident.

The terrorist threat is simply some Orwellian/1984-style bullshit to convince people they are under attack so they will allow the goverment to resrict their liberties and wage imperial wars of aggression.

"It is very simple to take the people to war...you must simply convince the people they are under attack"-- Herrman Goering, Nazi chief of the Luftwaffe.

[TwilightZone]

1. I wouldn't be so certain.

There are a significant number of nuclear weapons unaccounted for. All it would take is one Timothy McVeigh or Osama bin Laden protégé with a suitcase nuke to make 9/11 look like a flesh wound.

Edit: that being said, the threat is certainly overemphasized by the administration and the media. Believing that the threat is overstated does not mean that it doesn't exist or isn't a possibility.

[Nicky Scarfo]

2. I think this scenario is unlikely, but I will acknowledge it is possible

Winning the Cold War has had many negative consequences-- unaccounted nukes being one of them.

[Solon]

3. Problem with that scenario is this...

for one, there is no such thing as a "Suitcase" Nuke, at best you could possibly have one in the trunk of a car. Second, unless shielded by several feet of concrete or lead, all of these are detectable at ports and or borders by Geiger Counters that cost less than 50 bucks a piece. Other problems also exist for the would be terrorists, for one, many of these nukes weigh several tons each, making transport to target hard as hell to do without missles. All this being said, is it a possibility, yes, but so is being struck by an asteroid, or having life cleaned off the planet by cosmic radiation.

Why go through with the cost and risk involving a nuclear weapon, when biological, or more likely, chemical weapons are cheaper to make, can be made in the country targeted, and are not traceable. If 9/11 proves anything, it is this, terrorists will go the cheapest route to kill as many as possible. All it cost for them was the exacto knives and a plane ticket, and over 2000 people died from that.

[TwilightZone]

7. Semantics.

First, thanks to Russia, there are a lot of nukes unaccounted for. And, thanks to our lax inspection policies, someone could sneak one in.

Second, you're assuming that one isn't already here. bin Laden (or anyone else, for that matter) had a lot of time to get one here before we bothered to improve inspection procedures. A decade or more.

Third, do you really believe that someone would just show up at a border checkpoint with it? 4,000 people get across the Mexico/US border every day. Kind of difficult to detect one at the checkpoint if it never sees the checkpoint.

[Ardee]

4. No such thing

No suitcase in the world is big enough to hold a nuclear device.More accurately they should be called foot locker bombs, and really, really big and really, really heavy decribes them well.

The terrorists are a result of capitalism gone amok, unequal distribution of wealth (really really unequal), the disenfranchisment of many peoples and some overly religious fervor that would, in and of itself, be unimportant without the first three factors.

While I do believe that the threat is real, I also understand how Bush and company are manipulating the nation to their own ends by playing on the fear of attack.....He said he hit the trifecta and he wasnt kidding.

[Deja Q]

5. True to a large extent.

Though if religion, or our hypocrisy of our religion, wasn't a factor before, * made it into one. I think it transcends American worldwide exploitation, but that is a large part of it.

[Ardee]

11. Not just American fanaticism

muslim as well.
Not just American expoitative practices but all of the western powers exploiting all of the rest.

[TwilightZone]

9. See post #7

n/t

[Goldmund]

13. I think Michael Moore used the political definition of "threat"...

...when he made that statement, not the literal one.

Politically, this "terrorist threat" has been used as a justification around which our whole foreign policy revolves around.

If you take the literal definition of the word "threat", then we would start the War on Lightning and the War On Poisonous Snakes analogously to the way * started the War on Terror.

[maxsolomon]

6. i said this on 9/12

its statistically POSSIBLE, but highly unlikely.

i'm not going to walk around scared of al queda & their suitcase nukes like a lot rugged individualist american paranoiacs. its not going to happen, like the fucking rapture isn't going to happen. besides, if it does, and i'm nearby, i'm vaporized. what do i care?

iran might shoot a nuke at israel if they want to fucking die 10 minutes later, and i don't think they're that crazy.

& kim il sung is a joke, too. china needs to mop that one up as a favor to us.

[Bleacher Creature]

8. There used to be one.

But not anymore. Didn't you read John Ashcroft's resignation letter??

[delete_bush]

10. Let's face it, repukes are a loathsome bunch. They

talk big but are in reality a bunch of scaredy cats. For thirty or more years we lived under the constant threat of thousands of missiles with tens of thousands of MIRV'd warheads raining down on us at any time, even by accident, and we seemed to function fine without creating security moms et al.

Under the guise of protecting us Bushco has used the sweet smell of fascism for unprecedented control of the populace.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. That's my attitude as well

You are so much more likely to be killed in a car crash than in a bomb blast that the bomb blast isn't worth worrying about on a day to day basis.

Whoever was responsible for 9/11 (and I tend toward LIHOP myself), the Bushies have made the most of it. Remember that the PNAC were eager for a Pearl Harbor-like incident so that they could implement their plans.

[Her Blondness]

14. Every week it is 9/11 in Iraq.

If you take their population proportionately.