Suitably Flip

Phew!

I tell you, I'm feeling better and better about that 40% cut in New York's federal anti-terror funding.

Sure, al Qaeda was set to unleash a cyanide bomb attack in the city's subway system in 2003, but they did call it off, after all.

U.S. authorities had intelligence that a team of Al Qaeda-linked terrorists had infiltrated the United States and planned a 2003 attack on the New York City subway system with homemade cyanide bombs, federal and local counter-terrorism officials have acknowledged to NEWSWEEK. But the officials say the plot was called off at the last minute by Al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri-for reasons that remain unclear.
...
Zawahiri remains at large and is believed to be with bin Laden.

As Allah notes at Hot Air, this is an indication that al Qaeda terrorists have WMD capabilities and apparently have (or at least recently had) the capacity to deploy them in our cities.

From the Homeland Security website:

Cyanide – Cyanide is a rapidly acting, potentially deadly chemical that exists in many forms. Exposure can occur from breathing air, drinking water, eating food, or touching soil that contains cyanide. This agent prevents the cells of the body from using oxygen. It is most dangerous in an enclosed space.

Apparently more worrisome than the chemical itself is the dispersal mechanism at al Qaeda's fingertips.  According to an excerpt from Ron Suskind's new book The One Percent Doctrine, which details the planned attack, the device in question is "the holy grail of terror R&D".

U.S. intelligence got its first inkling of the plot from the contents of a laptop computer belonging to a Bahraini jihadist captured in Saudi Arabia early in 2003. It contained plans for a gas-dispersal system dubbed "the mubtakkar" (Arabic for inventive). ... [T]he CIA immediately set about building a prototype based on the captured design ... The prototype confirmed their worst fears: "In the world of terrorist weaponry," writes Suskind, "this was the equivalent of splitting the atom. Obtain a few widely available chemicals, and you could construct it with a trip to Home Depot – and then kill everyone in the store."

The device was shown to President Bush and Vice President Cheney the following morning, prompting the President to order that alerts be sent through all levels of the U.S. government. Easily constructed and concealed, mass casualties were inevitable if it could be triggered in any enclosed public space.

Previously:  A Letter To the President

Elsewhere:  Stop the ACLU, Protein Wisdom, Outside the Beltway

Comments

Phew!

I tell you, I'm feeling better and better about that 40% cut in New York's federal anti-terror funding.

Sure, al Qaeda was set to unleash a cyanide bomb attack in the city's subway system in 2003, but they did call it off, after all.

U.S. authorities had intelligence that a team of Al Qaeda-linked terrorists had infiltrated the United States and planned a 2003 attack on the New York City subway system with homemade cyanide bombs, federal and local counter-terrorism officials have acknowledged to NEWSWEEK. But the officials say the plot was called off at the last minute by Al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri-for reasons that remain unclear.
...
Zawahiri remains at large and is believed to be with bin Laden.

As Allah notes at Hot Air, this is an indication that al Qaeda terrorists have WMD capabilities and apparently have (or at least recently had) the capacity to deploy them in our cities.

From the Homeland Security website:

Cyanide – Cyanide is a rapidly acting, potentially deadly chemical that exists in many forms. Exposure can occur from breathing air, drinking water, eating food, or touching soil that contains cyanide. This agent prevents the cells of the body from using oxygen. It is most dangerous in an enclosed space.

Apparently more worrisome than the chemical itself is the dispersal mechanism at al Qaeda's fingertips.  According to an excerpt from Ron Suskind's new book The One Percent Doctrine, which details the planned attack, the device in question is "the holy grail of terror R&D".

U.S. intelligence got its first inkling of the plot from the contents of a laptop computer belonging to a Bahraini jihadist captured in Saudi Arabia early in 2003. It contained plans for a gas-dispersal system dubbed "the mubtakkar" (Arabic for inventive). ... [T]he CIA immediately set about building a prototype based on the captured design ... The prototype confirmed their worst fears: "In the world of terrorist weaponry," writes Suskind, "this was the equivalent of splitting the atom. Obtain a few widely available chemicals, and you could construct it with a trip to Home Depot – and then kill everyone in the store."

The device was shown to President Bush and Vice President Cheney the following morning, prompting the President to order that alerts be sent through all levels of the U.S. government. Easily constructed and concealed, mass casualties were inevitable if it could be triggered in any enclosed public space.

Previously:  A Letter To the President

Elsewhere:  Stop the ACLU, Protein Wisdom, Outside the Beltway