09.13.11

The fearmonger

Posted in War On Terror at 8:37 am by George Smith

Terror news/speculation as a commodity vended by the mainstream media.

Today’s example, underlining the point made in “The bad guys won,” from the Daily Beats, by John Solomon:

America’s Next 12 Terror Threats

1. Biochemical Attacks

An intelligence report this summer warned that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was seeking castor beans, the simple but deadly ingredient needed to make a quick and lethal dose of the poison ricin. One concern was that ricin might be used in a subway attack, combined with an explosion to disperse the deadly toxin through the closed tunnels of a subway system. This is a scenario the U.S. military has long feared, going back to the 1960s and 1970s, and the sarin gas attack in Japan’s subways in the 1990s showed its lethality.

[Incompetent. Ricin is not quick. Initial symptoms of ricin poisoning take a few hours to show up. Death from a lethal dose, depending on the amount, can take from one to three days.]

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2. Radiological Bombs

The so-called dirty bomb has been an obsession of U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials for years, dating to 2002, when the FBI suspected an Illinois man named Jose Padilla of plotting such an attack. Padilla was ultimately convicted of other crimes. Still, officials recognize it would be fairly easy for a terror group to collect radiological waste from hospital machines overseas and package it with an explosive.

[Incompetent citation, again. Jose Padilla thought he could enrich uranium by swinging it in a bucket tied to a rope.]

5. Cyberterrorism

…With the help of a state sponsor well versed in cyberwarfare, a terror group could shut down parts of the U.S. electric grid, cause havoc with financial trades …

[The electrical grid and Wall Street memes, repeated in almost every story on cyberterror/cyberwar.]

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“John Solomon is the editor of news and investigations for Newsweek and The Daily Beast,” reads the tagline.

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