LUCIFER'S
LUGGAGE
Suitcase Nukes In America
Written by Stephen Quayle™
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Copyright © 2005 by Stephen Quayle™
All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, no portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the publisher. |
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The First Nukes
In August 1945 the United States unleashed a new weapon of mass destruction against the Japanese first at Hiroshima and a few days later, at Nagasaki. These attacks brought the close to World War II and most likely saved millions of Japanese and American lives by avoiding a bloody invasion of Japan that would undoubtedly only ended after many fights to the death in hand-to-hand combat.
These new “atomic bombs” were whole orders of magnitude beyond any conventional explosives that had been seen up to that time in warfare. The weapons killed by the sheer magnitude of their blasts. But they also unleashed a heat pulse that created firestorms. And later it was discovered that they also created deadly nuclear fallout as well. Although the US held the only nuclear weapons for a time, Soviet spies had soon sent the know-how to Russia. By 1949, the Soviet Union had assembled this knowledge into a workable bomb which it exploded to demonstrate to the world that it, too, held the secrets to devastating animation. As the Soviet Union started invading its neighbors, it soon was demonstrating that it had taken up where the Nazis had only recently left off. Soon both the East and the West had embarked upon an arms races that threatened to unleash a hail of nuclear bombs and missile warheads across the face of the planet. As the hostilities increased, it also became apparent that the strategic bombing of World War II, in which civilian populations as well as industrial centers were targets, would likely continue with deadly efficiency should a nuclear war break out. In order to preserve life as well as industrial capacity, both nations (as well as those around them) were soon developing civil defense procedures to minimize losses. Unfortunately the US civil defense program ground to an abrupt halt under President Johnson when Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara devised the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (with the apt acronym "MAD"). According to this doctrine, since the nuclear damage done to both sides of a nuclear exchange would be so serious, neither side could afford to launch the first attack. With that assumption in hand, the US federal government discontinued most of its civil defense programs, instead relegating most preparations to dealing with hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters, while leaving the American public as sitting ducks to any nuclear attack that might have occurred. (Interestingly, this discontinuation of protection for the American public was done very quietly so that for decades afterward, many US citizens thought that the fallout shelter signs - left in place from the real civil defense programs of the 1950s and 1960s - were still stocked with supplies. In fact most either had out-dated supplies or none at all. Equally fascinating is that the US congress and various presidential successors to Nixon continued to build lavish fallout shelters for themselves and stock them with supplies, all paid for by US taxpayers who remained unprotected unless they spent their own money for a private shelter.) The Russians, Chinese, and others didn't buy into this doctrine, however, and continued to develop complex fallout and blast shelters, spread out their industries and military complexes so they would be hard to attack, and trained their populations to survive nuclear strikes. By the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter realized that MAD was quickly becoming a one-sided affair where the Russians (or Chinese) might be able to attack, destroy most of the US's cities, industries, and military complexes, and then survive any counter attack by the US. All of which would leave the congressmen and president, sitting in their expensive shelters, with no country to lead. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter created the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to deal with the problem, his administration also coming up with a bizarre plan to completely evacuate US cities, leaving behind only essential personnel who would (the theory went) continue to run key industries and keep the cities spic and span for when the population returned. Such a plan would never have worked. Just getting a huge population out of town before missiles arrived (less than 20 minutes if launched from a Soviet submarine off the US coast) was impossible; having them leave early might precipitate an attack since the Russians could see we were preparing for war. Worse, there were never any plans as to how to house and feed those who might have managed to get out. Various cities were told that their populations would go to this or that small town on their outskirts, but the officials in those areas got no funding nor were they ever given any insight as to what they should do when the thousands or even millions of people arrived at their outskirts, wanting somewhere to stay, water to drink, and food to eat. Providentially for Americans, neither McNamara's MAD scheme nor Carter's equally mad scheme were ever put to the test. President Ronald Reagan instead took office and immediately launched a “Star Wars” defense plan that would make Soviet missiles obsolete while the new President also took additional steps that would eventually bankrupt the Soviet economy as they built more and more weapons in the hope of being able to overpower the new defensive shield. Eventually the US President would stand in Germany and say, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall,” sounding the death knell for the Cold War as well as the Berlin Wall that had been erected to imprison East Germans in their “workers' paradise.” When the Berlin Wall fell, it signaled that the Achilles' heel of the Communist system had been wounded: It's lack of competition and lack of a system that rewarded innovation had bankrupted both its economy as well as its creativity. Hard on the heels of this public demonstration of weakness in the Soviet Empire came the revelation from the CIA and other quarters that the Soviet weapons were not as reliable as had once been thought. This truth had been hinted in failed attempts by overwhelming numbers of Arab nations, armed with Soviet military equipment, to invade Israel. Despite the fact that the Israelis were vastly outnumbered, each time they were able to beat back the invasions. Each time it appeared that the US-based weapons systems used by the Israelis had bested that of the Russians by a wide margin. This weakness of Soviet weaponry became painfully apparent with the Gulf War under President George Bush. This time American troops, armed with new high-tech Abrams tanks and Bradley APCs, as well as with a wealth of smart bombs and guided weapons launched both from the ground as well as from the air, proved that there was no contest between the East and West when it came to weapons designs. Not only were US casualties few and far between, many Iraq soldiers died without ever knowing what had hit them. And Russian-made anti-aircraft weapons, charged with protecting the skies over Baghdad, were ludicrously incapable of bringing down American planes. The fall of the Berlin Wall had been the death rattle; the Gulf War drove the stake through the heart of communism. And to the dismay of fellow travelers and socialists around the world, capitalism had broken the back of the Soviet system, thanks in large part to Ronald Reagan, who had the insight to use what America did best to bring about the demise of the brutal Russian government, as well as put such governments to rout in China, North Korea, and elsewhere. Regrettably, even as the Soviet Empire was in its death throws, a new backward looking system was being devised to replace it. Like communism, this one loathed our free society, Christian principles, and the work ethic. This new one was based on a direct reading and belief in the teachings of the Koran. And it hoped to use these deadly teachings to destroy our Christian nation and our way of life, killing and enslaving us in the process. Worse, some of the very same nuclear weapons that were created in the Soviet Union for use against America may be finding their way into our new enemy's hands, sold to them through the black market that has grown in what remains of the Russian empire. Some of these weapons are seriously dangerous. For example weapons expert Christoph Bluth, who serves as Professor at the Graduate School of European and International Studies at the University of Reading, wrote in 1997,10
A few months later, US Congressman Fortney Pete Stark would also note,11
A few weeks later Dr. Thomas Cochran, director of the Nuclear Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council and former Chairman of the International Task Force Appointed by the Moscow Nuclear Safety Summit would also sound the alarm,12
While some efforts were made to secure Russian nuclear weapons and materials, for the most part these warnings came too late, or went all but unheeded. As will be detailed in the following chapters, nuclear materials continue to enter the black market not just from Russia, and rogue states like North Korea and Iran are enjoying the benefits of these smuggled materials to create their own nuclear weapons programs.
A nuclear attack by terrorists on US soil is overdue. It is not a matter of “if” but rather “when.”
1 Curt Weldon, Committee on National Security, Military Research and Development Subcommittee, Washington, DC, Wednesday, October 1-2, 1997. |
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Coming Jan. 2005!
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