Claim: Al Qaeda Plans Nuke Attack In UK

I say "claim" not because I doubt Al Qaeda has such plans, but because it's less likely they can actually acheive them.

Less likely, but not wholly unlikely.

There is a dangerous failure of imagination in the West. Westerners assume that because the thought of losing major Western cities is so horrible as to be unthinkable. So they don't think about it.

But unthinkable isn't the same as impossible. It's unthinkable that a healthy person might contract a serious, deadly illness and die within five years of misery. Or suffer a freak accident leaving him a quadroplegic.

So no one thinks much about that. (Except maybe Allah.)

Obviously, however, such horrible things happen all the time. They're unthinkable. But hardly imposslble. Sometimes they're not even terribly uncommon, unfortunately.

The West continues to refuse to imagine the unthinkable and confront it. And Bush is complicit in this. It's time for the American people to be informed, in no uncertain terms, they're heading for apocalypse unless they act to stop it.

Perhaps we can't stop it. But doing nothing guarantees a bad result.

They have announced their intentions, as they have so many times before. Will we continue to dismiss their claims as hyperbole?

I thought September 11th had changed that. I guess not.

At the very least we need to announce a new nuclear doctrine -- something along the lines that any nuclear attack will be met with a devastating nuclear response against any countries (including their citiies) involved in any way in proliferating nuclear weapons.

Might as well put it out there so that people understand precisely what they will suffer if they aid and abet the "unthinkable."

posted by Ace at 05:53 PM

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