David Ignatius, not exactly one you'd call a stooge for the administration, has a column out today that he believes is very, very important. It is warning of the dangers of a nuclear-armed al Qaeda.
WASHINGTON — Rolf Mowatt-Larssen is paid to think about the unthinkable. As the Energy Department's director of intelligence, he's responsible for gathering information about the threat that a terrorist group will attack America with a nuclear weapon.
With his shock of white hair and piercing eyes, Mowatt-Larssen looks like a man who has seen a ghost. And when you listen to a version of the briefing he has been giving recently to President Bush and other top officials, you begin to understand why. He is convinced that al-Qaeda is trying to acquire a nuclear bomb that will leave the ultimate terrorist signature — a mushroom cloud.
We've all had enough fear-mongering to last a lifetime. Indeed, we have become so frightened of terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001, that we have begun doing the terrorists' job for them by undermining the legal framework of our democracy. And truly, I wish I could dismiss Mowatt-Larssen's analysis as the work of an overwrought former CIA officer with too many years in the trenches.
But it's worth listening to his warnings — not because they induce more numbing paralysis, but because they might stir sensible people to take actions that could detect and stop an attack. That's why his boss, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, is encouraging him to speak out. They don't want to anguish later that they didn't sound the alarm in time.
Read the whole thing. Mowatt-Larssen, via Ignatius, paints a very frightening picture. The left will dismiss this as fear-mongering, of course. It is not. As Ignatius points out, it is better to look now to how we can avert a catastrophic attack rather than lament about it after the mushroom cloud erupts.
Considering that a majority of americans are more more fearful of Climate Change I believe many American do not consider such a thing as terrorism.
That, and clearly with so much apathy abound regarding the Lonely War a lot of Americans are more interested in maintaining their state of happy than paying attention to the enemy.
In my circle, we’ve been saying since about six months after 9/11/2001 that the only thing which will really wake Americans up will be an attack bigger than what took down the twin towers.
I have no doubt Al Queda is going to nuke American soil, it’s just a matter of time. Mark my words when that happens the majority of Americans will say ‘how could this have happened’ as a way to aleviate the guilt after of six years of apathy.
Fear, it’s not fear, of you understand the enemy it’s common-sense.