Making Sense of Jihad

Oh Lord, This Again

MEMRITv has a clip of Lebanese cleric Abd al-Karim Fadlallah perpetuating the Islamist fantasy that Muslims were already settled in the New World before Columbus landed there:

The Arabic language, 200 years ago, was a universal language. It's interesting to note that when Christopher Columbus went to America, in what language did he speak with the Indians? It is said that the language they spoke with the Indians  and I have indisputable documentation of this at home... The intellectuals among the Indians spoke Arabic. He took two Arabs with him, to serve as interpreters between the Spaniards and the Indians. He took two of them as translators. So you can imagine the historic and cultural value of Arabic. It's undoubtedly very important.

His is just the latest of an ever-growing trend toward "Muslim-izing" the early history of the New World.   They include this  oldie but a goodie from Saudi Aramco World. Or, this 2003 "editorial" in the Charlotte Observer: 

It is important for the American public to know that although this political movement by Muslims may be somewhat new, Muslims have been a part of the fabric of this society, in some fashion, since before Columbus. Muslim explorers visited the West Coast long ago. Arabic writings have been found in some caves in California. The name "California" comes from the Arabic word calif, meaning ruler or leader.

There's also  this recent government-funded fantasy about Christopher Columbus' navigator.  However, my favorite by far is the Middle East Policy Council textbook that states that Arab Muslims became Algonquin "tribal chiefs" long before Columbus arrived. 

If it wasn't for Little Green Footballs, we'd never know this was going on.  However, all you really need to do is just Google "Algonquin Muslims" and explore the results.

This would be laughable if it wasn't so scary.  After all, this is the kind of garbage taught in US-based madrassas.   And it just so happens that one of the justifications for jihad is to return previously Muslim lands to Muslim control.  Regardless of how wacky the story is, it will resonate with enough US-born Muslim children who are taught  to see jihad as a justification for future acts of violence and intimidation on the US homeland.

Why Public Records Should Be Open to Public Scrutiny

Reason #1 why public library records should be public:

Although tried and convicted as Abbas Boutrab, 27, he has so many aliases that police admit they have no idea who is really is.

Boutrab was found guilty of possessing articles for purposes connected with terrorism. They included 25 computer disks of detailed instruction on how to make a bomb and how to get on board a plane to blow up the aircraft.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland sent the instructions to the FBI in America, who followed them and produced a bomb which, when detonated, blew apart a row of airline seats and tore through the aircraft skin beside them.

Boutrab had downloaded the information from the internet on a computer in Belfast Central Library, the trial heard.

He was the first al-Qaeda suspect to be tried in Northern Ireland under the non-jury Diplock court system, which had only previously been used for the trial of Loyalist and Republican terrorists.

Mr Justice Weatherup delivered three guilty verdicts after considering evidence during the six-week trial. He said he would pass sentence on December 19.

The Algerian, who downloaded the information on January 23, 2003, was arrested the following April when the disks were found during an immigration raid on his home at Whitehouse on the northern outskirts of Belfast.

Blunt Talk From Down Under

Jihad's goal is a single, global, Islamist state.  Even the most mainstream Islamist groups -- like the Muslim Brotherhood front groups here in the US -- will admit that there goal is the establishment of an Islamic state.  It's what animates their work.   

As one Islamist website says:  The Sun of Islam Will Rise from the West.

U.S. counterterrorism officials should be reminding the Islamists among us that they work in vain, just like this Australian official:

Meanwhile, Peter Costello has warned that those Muslims who want to live in a country governed by sharia law, which imposes strict limitations on personal freedoms, should live elsewhere.

"If you are somebody who wants to live in an Islamic state governed by sharia law you are not going to be happy in Australia because Australia is not an Islamic state, will never be an Islamic state and will never be governed by sharia law," the Treasurer said yesterday.

Terrorism is Like Porn

This from today's The Australian tells you need to know about what real terrorism looks like:

IT was a sudden explosion of intercepted "chatter" early last week that rang the alarm inside the nation's spy and police network.

After 18 months of surveillance, investigators were convinced the group was planning an attack and the Australian Federal Police was close to gathering the final pieces of evidence against them.

But when senior police chiefs and ASIO met on Tuesday last week they confronted their worst nightmare. Intercepts from telephones, computers and other spying devices revealed that the suspects had suddenly abandoned their usual routine.

Instead there was a frenzy of communication between the Melbourne and Sydney groups -- a blizzard of "chatter" that pointed to the horrifying conclusion that an attack was imminent.

The rumors, the conjecture, the general bullshit guesstimating that goes on in the IC and in open source has nothing, nothing on the real thing.  Terrorism is like porn, you know it when you see it. 

The Only Group That Matters

It's Lashkar-e-tayyiba, folks, and I'm working on a profile of its recent activity.

An Appetite for Territory

I'm always reluctant to predict the outcome of an evolving situation like the Paris riots because the volatility of such situations renders most "insight" worthless in a matter of hours. Some have been calling it a European Intafada. I was reluctant to go that far --after all, this kind of unrest on a smaller scale has been increasing in Europe, especially in the  UK. I was reluctant, that is, until today. The situation in France has clearly evolved from some opportunistic mayhem to an organized movement with its own websites and forums, and an increasingly obvious goal: concessions.

Not just any concessions, mind you, but the only ones that give jihadis the advantage they need: territory. I read this today, and I realized that the riots of “youths” and “troublemakers” has become a golden opportunity for the older and wiser Islamist to gain some measure of control over their communities, as Caroline Glick writes in the Jerusalem Post:

One of the notable aspects of the violence thus far is the absence of murder. The militants have apparently decided to limit their campaign to property damage. No doubt this is because their objective is political, not military. As some Muslim leaders have explained, what they want is autonomy in their ghettos. They seek to receive extraterritorial status from the French government, meaning that they will set their own rules based, one can assume, on Sharia law.

If the militants are able to achieve this goal, even on an informal basis, then those declaring that

France has fallen will be proven right. The only way for France to save itself is to prevent such a reality from occurring. If the French government accepts the notion of communal autonomy, France will cease to be a functioning state.

French authorities are to blame for permitting the riots to evolve into a political weapon. Almost two weeks into this and I still don't see any organized effort on the government’s part to crack down on the rioters. No major arrests, no troops, no technical efforts to halt communications or secure the rioters' daytime movements. There’s no uniting political force, either, as “center-right,” leftist and Communist groups seem to dither, bicker and whine over trivial matters such as what the use of a curfew really means:

"It's not enough to announce a curfew. There have to be security forces on the ground who can enforce it," said former Socialist Prime Minister Laurent Fabius.

Speaking on France-Inter radio, Fabius called curfews "repressive."

He and others on the political left said the government had not offered enough support to troubled suburbs and called for new social support and jobs programs.

Communist Party leader Marie-George Buffet warned that curfews could fan unrest by enflaming the rioters, adding that the government was "incapable of stopping these youths."

"I do not see how you can enforce the curfew," she told France-Info radio.

The leader of the center-right UDF party, Francois Bayrou, said the curfew was largely "symbolic" and of "shock" value, and criticized Chirac for distancing himself during the unrest.

Bayrou told RTL radio; "there needs to be a little distance _ but the absence of the president is remarkable."

Chirac was keeping to his official schedule, hosting Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga on Monday and lunching Tuesday with Prince Albert II of Monaco.

The president's first public comments on the rioting came Sunday _ 10 days after it began.

Two leading police unions, in a joint statement, said they welcomed Chirac's emergency decree, saying it would "give extra measures to police to ensure the law is respected."

I doubt a curfew is going to be effective in the long term, although it might halt the daily images of burning cars (the "Car-B-Que").

However, it’s the inevitable concessions that may have a devastating effect on  Western Europe.

One theme jihadis keep repeating in discussion forums and strategy document is the need for land, some stretch of property, somewhere, anywhere in the Dar-ul-Harb. They've been seeking it in the Philippines, especially Mindanao. They've been fighting for it in Aceh, Indonesia.  Reclaiming Al-Andalus is the primary justification for attacks in Spain.  And in Iraq, it's been the one key to mounting successful insurgency. American and Iraqi forces have been reclaiming "land," usually just a town or parts of a town, where foreign, Sunni jihadis have staked a claim, and then imposed Taliban-like shariah. In these enclaves they've been able to quickly take control of the local community's resources, and maintain command and control operations from a spot of relative security. The most obvious example of this has been Fallujah, but we're also seeing this in the most recent offensive in Husaybah:

Husaybah has long been a major transit point for terrorists coming in from Syria. For the last month, American smart bombs have acted on intelligence information to destroy safe houses and bomb workshops. The current offensive is to clean out the remaining terrorists, and turn the town over to the Iraqi police and civil authorities. Previously, there had been enough al Qaeda terrorists in the town to dominate the local government. The Sunni Arab population has been, over the last year, moving from pro-terrorist to pro-government. The foreign terrorists were cruel and arbitrary, insisting that civilians adhere to a strict version of Islam. The terrorists also became increasingly paranoid as they became aware of growing pro-government attitudes. This led to some violence against some local civilians. All this was a replay of the rise and fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan. There, the al Qaeda arrogance, and cruelty towards who were not Islamic enough, made the terrorists unpopular with civilians, and contributed to the rapid collapse of the Taliban government in October, 2001. . . .

Since the fall of Afghanistan, gaining terrirotry has been one of  the jihadi's most important long-range goals. Again and again, they've attempted to destabilize the government s of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the hope that more accomodating governments would replace them.  Senior Al Qaeda leaders have identified Iraq as an opportunity to gain control of territory.

A second Bin Laden tape, released on December 27, 2004, underscored Al Qaeda’s interest in Iraq and support for the ongoing insurgency. In this recording, Bin Laden personally welcomed and endorsed Jordanian-born terrorist leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi as an Al Qaeda affiliate and leader of Al Qaeda operations in Iraq. Bin Laden identified the insurgency in Iraq as “a golden and unique opportunity” for jihadists to engage and defeat the United States and he characterized the insurgency in Iraq as the central battle in a “Third World War, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation.” Describing Baghdad as “the capital of the caliphate,” Bin Laden asserted that “jihad in Palestine and Iraq today is a duty for the people of the two countries” and other Muslims.

In February 2005, a strategy paper called the Management of Barbarism was posted to the Al-Ihklas forum. Its author, Abu Bakr al-Naji, is a recognized Al Qaeda ideologue who has written for Voice of Jihad. The Management of Barbarism (MoB) focuses on the path to and the ultimate acquisition of territory. The first step is to create a political and social situation so bad that jihadis can seize control of territory, described as the “disruption and exhaustion” phase:

Leaders and followers can be affected by the need for deterrence…[thus convincing some Muslims to change sides and fight with the jihadis] At this point the enemy might be inclined to maintain the peace and persuade itself to withdraw t the rear lines to protect he economy and wealth for which it mobilized its forces in the first place…When the enemy retreats to the rear lines it withdraws from certain outposts, creasing a greater lack of security and barbarism. Here the muajhidin begin to develop their strength, their capacity for response, and improve their training in order to carry out acts that will enhance their reputation. When the enemy sees this spirit, it will have no choice but to join the movement or withdraw further, creating more territory. Then we must stake out these new areas, sense advance units to survey them, and then take control.

BTW:  the translation is a hybrid of me, a computer program, and a translator-friend

Once land is under jihadi control, the goal is to keep under jihadi control. The author goes as far as to suggest establishing committees and choosing good men with good management and leadership skills, and a long discussion on how to exploit regions under jihadi control:

When a state of barbarism exists…in the regional that we will control..people will rally to the country’s notables such as a political party a group…In this can we can start to attract these people [notables –ed] and make them side with the mujahidin. At this point we should conduct a media campaign that shows that our regions enjoy security andjustice under shariah laws, social cohesion…When this happens people will migrate from other areas to live in ours, God willing.

It goes on like this for pages and pages. MoB is replete with references to gaining and holding on to territory. Indeed, the entire book is dedicated to learning the mistakes of the past, particularly the loss of  Afghanistan. Al-Naji is clearly attempting to avoid the same mistakes made in the run up to American operations in Afghanistan. Perhaps he feels that the Mujahideen should have seized control of Afghanistan from the Taliban. Perhaps he feels that there should have been more support from the Afghans.

It doesn't much matter now. Regaining the advantage is what's important, and I suspect similar thinking is behind some of the jihadi conflicts like in the Philippines (where the government has ceded control of Mindanao to Muslim groups) and in Nigeria (where the government gave up control of legal and social institutions to radical Islamist groups). Note: follow the BBC News link and read the comments for an excellent sense of who is advocating for sharia and where they are located.

It's the same process underway in Gaza, where radical Islamists are claiming more and more control. Sadly, I'm beginning to believe that the longer the rioting goes on in France the more likely French leaders are going to do the same, and we're going to be faced with enclaves of jihadis in Western Europe different only by degrees from the hell of Fallujah.

A Beautiful Thing

UPDATE:  Counterterrorism Blog has more background on Setmarian.

The MSM is reporting the possible capture of senior Al Qaeda figure Mustafa Naser Setmarian in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province.  The details so far can be found here and here.

What interests me is the last paragraph of this NBC report:

In addition to confirming Nasar’s identity, the U.S. counterterrorism officials, as well as Pakistani government officials, told NBC News that that report on the timing of the arrest was inaccurate. They said Nasar was arrested prior to Monday in Quetta, in a raid was [sic]  the result of intelligence information that pointed to an al-Qaida safe house there.

The "intelligence information" mentioned here is key.  Where did it come from?  A local tip?  Or from a seized laptop?  Do authorities have someone else in custody that they're not talking about? Or is someone already in custody finally spilling the beans on his jihad brothers?  Could this be bitter fruit of the earthquake operations, with US/Pakistani officials uncovering information from damaged Al Qaeda safe houses or injured Al Qaeda suspects?

The initial information about the timing of the arrest may have been misinformation intentionally leaked to officials and/or the local press in order to throw off the real timing of the arrest.  If so, then they really do have someone important in custody who is providing information, willingly or unwillingly.

And this could explain Australian prime minister John Howard's announcement of a specific threat to mainland Australia.

(Possible) Good News from Pakistan

USAToday reports on the possible capture of Mustafa Naser Setmarian:

The two suspects were captured this week during a raid on a house in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, said one of the intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to address the media.

A senior government official confirmed the arrests and said authorities were investigating whether one of the suspects was Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, alleged to have had a key role in the March 11, 2004, Madrid bombings that left 191 people dead and more than 1,500 people injured. That official also declined to be named, saying he was not allowed to comment publicly on the investigation.

Neither the intelligence officials nor the government official had information about the identity of the second suspect.

Pakistani government spokesmen and the U.S. Embassy said they could not immediately confirm the arrests.

Last year, the U.S. government announced a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of Nasar, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri.

Estimating the Cost of an "Average" Attack

Counterterrorism Blog posts a report on the actual costs of a terrorist attack.  Joshua Prober of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy argues that far from being “cheap,” most major terrorist attacks cost hundreds of thousands of dollars:

Terrorist attacks incur costs besides operational expenses in the days and weeks before the attacks. Networks and infrastructure in place before the attack is planned are essential for a terrorist attack. Therefore the cost of establishing and maintaining that infrastructure has to be factored into any estimate of the cost of terror attacks. Consider that planning for the embassy bombings began “in the latter part of 1993,” according to a dossier released shortly after September 11by the British Prime Minister’s Office, when “members of al-Qaeda in Kenya began to discuss the possibility of attacking Nairobi.” Although data are unavailable on the cost of living incurred by the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam cells during the five-year period prior to the attacks, surely those expenses have to be included when totaling the cost of the attacks. That suggests that the UN figure of $50,000 for the embassy bombings is low. Similarly, the UN estimate of $10,000 for the Madrid bombings seems to exclude the cost of living and the cost of training for more than twenty people involved in perpetrating the attacks.

Later on today, I am going to post a cost estimate of an "average" car-bomb attack loosely based on Prober’s pre-operational timeline of the 1998 East African bombings:

• setting up and maintaining al-Qaeda run businesses, such as Asma Limited and Tanzanite King, in Nairobi in 1993
• travel for senior al-Qaeda members (including Muhammad Atef and Ubaidah al-Banshiri) to Nairobi
• training East African al-Qaeda operatives in various skills, such as bombmaking, hijacking, kidnapping, assassination, and intelligence gathering, in al-Qaeda training camps, including sending operatives to Lebanon to train at Hizballah terrorist camps
• renting an upscale residential estate in Nairobi and turning it into a virtual bomb factory
• renting another estate in the Illah district of Dar es Salaam
• maintaining a communications network between Osama Bin Laden and East African terror cells, including using satellite phones costing $80,000 each
• bribing local border officials
• purchasing electronic equipment including state-of-the-art video cameras from China and Germany for surveillance
• purchasing the Nissan and Toyota trucks used to bomb both embassies
• purchasing the TNT bombs used at both bombings

UPDATE:

Below is my mental exercise on the average cost of an "average" car bomb attack.  This is far from a serious estimate, only guesstimates based on information from past operations.  However, it should give you a better idea of the kinds of financing a successful, large scale attack would need.  Far from being "cheap,"  the operational costs of a large-scale attack increase dramatically with its complexity.  I use the mental model of an operational cell consisting of four guys recruited, trained, and preparing for an attack:

1.    Cost of recruitment: six months of free food,  activities ($1,000/6 months).  There are the kinds of activities showcased in these videos from the Finsbury Mosque, and the kind of meetings and sessions led by Ali al-Tamimi, now serving a life sentence for recruiting young men for jihad in Pakistan after 9-11.

2.    Cost of round trip tickets to Pakistan from, say, Washington, DC: Approx. $5,500 (based on a yahoo.travel search) per person

3.    Cost of housing recruits in 1) safe houses and 2) terror camps training. According to the Probe article, " East African al-Qaeda operatives in various skills, such as bombmaking, hijacking, kidnapping, assassination, and intelligence gathering, in al-Qaeda training camps, including sending operatives to Lebanon to train at Hizballah terrorist camps" (Guessed at $10,000 per man)

4.    Recruits rent a house or apartment after return (18 months from return to operational execution).  The Madrid suspect lived (and eventually died)  in a flat where they did much of their operational planning.    (approx $800/month for 18 months=$14,000)

5.    Living expenses for four young men (approximately $500/month per man for 18 months=$36,000)

6.    Maintaining a communications network: laptops, cell phones, Internet connections ($2000 each for 4 laptops, $150/month for cell phone accounts for 18 months) (approximately $15,000)

7.    Purchasing electronic equipment including state-of-the-art video cameras and binoculars/scopes for surveillance (A basic high-powered pair of binoculars: $500 for 2; a basic digital video camcorder: $1200 for 2)

8.    Purchasing the vehicles, like the Nissan and Toyota trucks used to bomb the embassies (2 used Suburbans at about $20,000 each)

9.    Purchasing the fertilizer – ammonium nitrate.  In March 2004 London police uncovered a terrorist cell preparing to attack landmarks within the city.  They found about 1120 (US) pounds of ammonium nitrate in a lockup.  The Department of Agriculture tracks fertilizer costs.  I'll guess that any group looking to buy that much fertilizer is going to cause suspicion;  they'll have to buy it surreptitiously, increasing the costs.

1.    $6,000
2.    $22,000
3.    $40,000
4.    $14,000
5.    $36,000
6.    $15,000
7.    $1,700
8.    $40,000
9.    $1,000

The exercise comes up with a cost of $175,700.  This is not counting unforeseen costs such as loss of an apartment or an extended operational timeline, or even the cost of housing and feeding the operatives in a training camp.  If there are two or more teams of four, then you can see where the costs increase dramatically.

A Treatise on the Legal Status of Using Weapons of Mass Destruction Against Infidels

Here's the full text of the Al Qaeda fatwa mentioned in Richard Miniter's fabulous article on suitcase nukes, Treatise on the Legal Status of Using Weapons of Mass Destruction.

BTW:  I'm uncovering mostly suitcase-nuke inspired hysterics.  If anyone can point to a link to sober, well-founded analysis of this fatwa, please post suggestions in the comments section.   Thanks.

The Next Generation

It's hard for people to appreciate how long the war against jihadism will take.   We tend to think in election cycles, always asking:  is it done yet?  Have we won yet?  We've forgotten -- forgotten -- how long the Cold War endured.  Even toward its end  it wasn't quite obvious who was going to win.  The fall of the Berlin Wall took many smart people by surprise.  Now I'm concerned that the length and depth of this war is going to take many by surprise.

Newt Gingrich recently reminded politicians that the global jihad may be a long war indeed.

The Long War is 90% intellectual, communications, political, economic,   diplomacy, and intelligence focused. It is at most 10% military. We have not   yet developed the doctrine or structure capable of thinking through and   implementing a Long War (30 to 70 years if we are lucky) on a societal scale.   This challenge is compounded because it is fundamentally different from   waging the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The Cold War was essentially a   grand siege in which a defensive alliance could contain the Soviet Union until   it collapsed.

Now we're facing jihadi, across the globe and next door.  They've been here -- many of them, anyway -- since the 1960s, or the early 1980s.  Many fled persecution in their own countries, and simply headed west.   They set up shop in Germany, France, UK and the US, recreating their Islamist organizations as charities and non-profits.The fruits of their labor can be seen all over the western world from radicalized mosques to charity scams based in America's suburbs.

So what's next?

Some of us are thinking about the future.  Who's going to take over when Osama and Ayman have  kicked the bucket?  The Society for Internet Research (SOFIR) has a new report on a new jihadi  "profile" posted by Global Islamic Media Front (one of AQ's media front group).  It purports to give a profile of the ideal jihadi:

The response of Al-Qaeda to the steps taken by Europe against its Muslims is therefore, to use European citizens—Christian converts to Islam who support global Jihad--in the next attacks. The model is “Rakan ben Wilyamz”—born and raised in the West; has studied in its educational system; prayed in their churches; drank alcoholic beverage; ate pork, and hated Muslims. But then he secretly became a devoted Muslim, adopted the philosophy of Al-Qaeda, and now he and his alike are wandering in Europe and the United States, gathering information and planning their next attacks. “Is the West ready for them?” asks Rakan Ben Wilyamz from Europe, who is “thirsty for martyrdom.”

In the early 1980s members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamist groups fled persecution from Syria, Egypt, and other countries.  They settled in the West and continued their work.  "Rakan ben Wilyamz"  is the fruit of their labors.

European Unrest

The Muslim youth riots and unrest in suburban Paris is in its seventh night.   The riots broke out after two young Muslim immigrants were electrocuted in a substation.  The rioters believe they were running away from police.  Police deny it.

According to BBC News, "Police said as many as 69 cars were set on fire on Tuesday night in nine towns in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, home to many impoverished communities."  That was on Tuesday night.  The International Herald Tribune reports on the ongoing violence in the poor, mostly Muslim immigrant communities around Paris:

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy...says that violence in French suburbs is a daily fact of life. Since the start of the year, 9,000 police cars have been stoned and, each night, 20 to 40 cars are torched, Sarkozy said in an interview last week with the newspaper Le Monde.

Similar violence has erupted in Århus, Denmark ,with little international reporting.  An English-language Danish blogger has translated a news article on on the ongoing unrest:

Saturday morning a 16-year-old somali boy was incarcerated, accused of aggravated assault, as he friday evening threw a cobblestone through a window in the bakery. The stone passed closely by baker Børge Svaløs face. ..

He calls himself 100 percent Palestinian, born in a refugee camp in Lebanon 19 years ago, and now out of work in Denmark.

"The police has to stay away. This is our area. We decide what goes down here".

And then the bit with the drawings of the prophet Muhammed comes around:

We are tired of what we see happening with our prophet. We are tired of Jyllands-Posten. I know it isnt you, but we wont accept what Jyllands-Posten has done to the prophet", he says aggressively, and the others nod approvingly.

To of them are Turks, and it is the first time, that Turks and Palestinians act together, the 19-year-old says.

"We have planned this for three weeks. That is why only two were arrested saturday nigh. The police will cordon off it all. But we know the ways out", he claims, and then disappears, munching on a piece of pizza from Fun Pizza.

The pizzerias windows are also held together by adhesive tape after the attacks with cobblestones.

Urban Legends of Jihad: The Suitcase Nuke

I sat through an RDD class when I was an intel analyst. 

There's nothing more effective at calming concerns over dirty bombs and "stray" nukes  than some good, reliable (and very dull) information on radiation and radioactive material.  Identifying sources, calculating half-lives, using dork-inspired radiation detector pagers, were all part of the mostly unclassified course in basic physics and common sense.  After two days, I came out feeling that the terrorists don't have a chance at using one these devices (unless they're given one by a rogue government).

There's only one thing more effective than that class:  a WMD expert rolling their eyes at the mention of a suitcase nuke.

Richard Miniter in the Wall Street Journal does an excellent and thorough job debunking the legend of the suitcase nuke:

So could al Qaeda make its own bomb? It appears that the terror network has tried and failed.

In August 2001, bin Laden was envisioning attacks bigger than what happened on September 11. Almost a month before the attacks on New York and Washington, bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri met with Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majeed, two officials once part of Pakistan's nuclear program. Mr. Mahmood had supervised the plant that enriched uranium for Pakistan's first bomb and later managed efforts to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Both scientists were arrested on Oct. 23, 2001. They remain under house arrest in Pakistan. At their meeting with bin Laden, they discussed plans to mine uranium from plentiful deposits in Afghanistan and talked about the technology needed to turn the uranium into bomb fuel. It was these scientists who informed bin Laden that the uranium from Uzbekistan was too impure to be useful for bomb making.

Al Qaeda will keep trying, no doubt. But there is no evidence that they are near succeeding. A wide array of documents and computer hard drives found in al Qaeda safe houses reveals a serious effort to build weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. military also obtained a document with the sinister title of "Superbomb."

In addition, CNN discovered a cache of documents at an al Qaeda safe house that outlined the terror network's WMD plans. David Albright, a physicist and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, was retained by CNN to evaluate the al Qaeda documents.

In "Al Qaeda's Nuclear Program: Through the Window of Seized Documents," a research paper for a think tank linked to the University of California at Berkeley, Albright concluded: "Whatever al Qaeda had accomplished towards nuclear weapon capabilities, its effort in Afghanistan was 'nipped in the bud' with the fall of the Taliban government. The international community is fortunate that the war in Afghanistan set back al Qaeda's effort to obtain nuclear weapons."

For now, suitcase-sized nuclear bombs remain in the realm of James Bond movies. Given the limitations of physics and engineering, no nation seems to have invested the time and money to make them. Both U.S. and the USSR built nuclear mines (as well as artillery shells), which were small but hardly portable--and all were dismantled by treaty by 2000. Alexander Lebed's claims and those of defector Stanislev Lunev were not based on direct observation. The one U.S. official who saw a small nuclear device said it was the size of three footlockers--hardly a suitcase. The desire to obliterate cities is portable--inside the heads of believers--while, thankfully, the nuclear devices to bring that about are not.

The real jihadi threats are scary enough, we don't need to throw fantastical stories of suitcase nukes into the mix.   So read the whole article, and relax.  There's probably a greater threat of jihadi converting your children in public school then there is of a homemade nuke going off in your hometown.

But if you wish to continue to "believe" in suitcase nukes,  I can sell you the plans to build your own, and point you in the way of some high quality red mercury.

E-mail me at kickme@hotmail.com.