What would the US response be if Al Queda

Bumrush99

Diamond Member
Jun 14, 2004
3,334
194
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Just thinking about this on my way to work today.. What would the US reaction be to an Al Queda/terrorist attack in a major US city that dwarfed 9/11? What would our government do if an operative was able to successfully set off a portable nuclear device in a major US city, killing thousands of people and making that city uninhibitable?

From a foriegn policy perspective, what more could we do? Invade Saudi Arabia? Launch a strike on Iran? Could our military forces handle a 2 or 3 pronged war? Would our allies that are now semi-cold towards us provide military/financial support?

The only major changes I forsee would be a strengthening of the Department of Homeland Security to the point where all immigrants in this country that have ties to Muslim countries would be under surveillance.
 

Rainsford

Lifer
Apr 25, 2001
17,515
0
0
Or...we could do react in a way that would actually bring the people behind the attack to justice and prevent future attacks. Extra funding for intelligence and police work that no one will ever notice if it works is not the type of political grandstanding that comes naturally to politicians, but I think that a much worse attack will actually make people want real solutions. 9/11 was a great excuse for war and decreased civil liberties and torturing prisoners. But a worse attack, rather than causing a stronger push towards all those things, would probably pull us away. Because it will have been obvious that those things don't work, it would even be possible that they made it worse. Think about it, people will notice that the famous lack of reaction by Clinton (and previous presidents) to terrorism was the lead up to 9/11. But if we are attacked worse, it will have been after years of war and the Republican's tough guy approach to fighting terrorism. What conclusions do you think people will draw?

I think a worse terror attack will be a wakeup call for REAL action that really does fight terrorism. I'm not saying what we have now is worthless, but I don't think it's too useful either. There are a lot better things we could be doing with our resources, the only reason we're not is that politicians like big, bold statements (useful or not) because without external pressure, that's all people notice. I think a much worse attack would provide that external pressure.
 

Future Shock

Senior member
Aug 28, 2005
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Nuclear devices have nuclear fingerprints and are traceable...and it would SUCK for your country to have theirs on that bomb...I'm sorry, did I say "your country"? I meant "your smouldering hole in the ground"...

Future Shock
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,091
513
126
Let me guess, a unified front for 18 months, then opportunists start planting those seeds of doubt and we go back to fighting internally like children.
 

Czar

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
28,510
0
0
Originally posted by: Genx87
Let me guess, a unified front for 18 months, then opportunists start planting those seeds of doubt and we go back to fighting internally like children.

would depend if it were done like Afghanistan or done like Iraq, its up to those in control
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,091
513
126
Originally posted by: Czar
Originally posted by: Genx87
Let me guess, a unified front for 18 months, then opportunists start planting those seeds of doubt and we go back to fighting internally like children.

would depend if it were done like Afghanistan or done like Iraq, its up to those in control

From the people on the left neither has been a success.

 

Czar

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
28,510
0
0
Originally posted by: Genx87
Originally posted by: Czar
Originally posted by: Genx87
Let me guess, a unified front for 18 months, then opportunists start planting those seeds of doubt and we go back to fighting internally like children.

would depend if it were done like Afghanistan or done like Iraq, its up to those in control

From the people on the left neither has been a success.

I think its probably because important resources were being shifted away from Afghanistan a year before Iraq. Afghanistan was the right thing to do and needs to be done right.
 

Strk

Lifer
Nov 23, 2003
10,197
4
76
Originally posted by: Genx87
Originally posted by: Czar
Originally posted by: Genx87
Let me guess, a unified front for 18 months, then opportunists start planting those seeds of doubt and we go back to fighting internally like children.

would depend if it were done like Afghanistan or done like Iraq, its up to those in control

From the people on the left neither has been a success.

Well, the fact that we kind of just cut and run in Afghanistan doesn't exactly help reinforce Dubya's ability to do, well, anything.
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,091
513
126
Originally posted by: Strk
Originally posted by: Genx87
Originally posted by: Czar
Originally posted by: Genx87
Let me guess, a unified front for 18 months, then opportunists start planting those seeds of doubt and we go back to fighting internally like children.

would depend if it were done like Afghanistan or done like Iraq, its up to those in control

From the people on the left neither has been a success.

Well, the fact that we kind of just cut and run in Afghanistan doesn't exactly help reinforce Dubya's ability to do, well, anything.

We have ~18,000 troops in Afghanistan, how is that cutting and running? What was the size of the initial invasion force?

 

jpeyton

Moderator in SFF, Notebooks, Pre-Built/Barebones
Moderator
Aug 23, 2003
25,375
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Originally posted by: Future Shock
Nuclear devices have nuclear fingerprints and are traceable...and it would SUCK for your country to have theirs on that bomb...I'm sorry, did I say "your country"? I meant "your smouldering hole in the ground"...

Future Shock

So we're going to nuke Russia, eh? Seeing as how Russia currently has the largest unsecured stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. That should work out nicely for both parties; I'm sure the American people will enjoy fireballs engulfing every major city in the country.

Bombing Saudi Arabia is always another classic retarded idea from the right-wing loonies on this forum. I'm sure they'd love to pay $20/gallon for gas as much as the next guy.

Let's just bomb Afghanistan again and do it over. Who cares about being right; it's all about dropping some bombs and killing some people, doesn't matter if they even know where the US is on a map.
 

CycloWizard

Lifer
Sep 10, 2001
12,348
1
81
Originally posted by: Rainsford
Or...we could do react in a way that would actually bring the people behind the attack to justice and prevent future attacks. Extra funding for intelligence and police work that no one will ever notice if it works is not the type of political grandstanding that comes naturally to politicians, but I think that a much worse attack will actually make people want real solutions. 9/11 was a great excuse for war and decreased civil liberties and torturing prisoners. But a worse attack, rather than causing a stronger push towards all those things, would probably pull us away. Because it will have been obvious that those things don't work, it would even be possible that they made it worse. Think about it, people will notice that the famous lack of reaction by Clinton (and previous presidents) to terrorism was the lead up to 9/11. But if we are attacked worse, it will have been after years of war and the Republican's tough guy approach to fighting terrorism. What conclusions do you think people will draw?

I think a worse terror attack will be a wakeup call for REAL action that really does fight terrorism. I'm not saying what we have now is worthless, but I don't think it's too useful either. There are a lot better things we could be doing with our resources, the only reason we're not is that politicians like big, bold statements (useful or not) because without external pressure, that's all people notice. I think a much worse attack would provide that external pressure.
I would agree with this, except there is no real solution to terrorism. As I've stated before, if people want to blow up other people, they can do it and there's no way you can stop them. I can drive to Home Depot and WalMart today in my little Acura Integra and pack it with all the goodies I need to blow up an entire mall. How can you defend against this? The only way is to hope that terrorists are too stupid to figure out this sort of thing. I'd be willing to bet five random attacks on shopping malls in middle America would have a lot more terrifying effects than 9/11 on the average American, especially around the holidays. That terrorists haven't figured this out yet gives me hope, because maybe they really are just that stupid.
 

azazyel

Diamond Member
Oct 6, 2000
5,872
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Originally posted by: Genx87

We have ~18,000 troops in Afghanistan, how is that cutting and running? What was the size of the initial invasion force?

Well, I don't know how many were there originally but we need more there now. Just take a look at the output of Opium since we invaded. As of now it has exceeded prewar heights. This means more funding for the drug lords and terrorists.
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,091
513
126
Originally posted by: azazyel
Originally posted by: Genx87

We have ~18,000 troops in Afghanistan, how is that cutting and running? What was the size of the initial invasion force?

Well, I don't know how many were there originally but we need more there now. Just take a look at the output of Opium since we invaded. As of now it has exceeded prewar heights. This means more funding for the drug lords and terrorists.

Someobody posted a link that showed the only year opium production was lower than it is now is in 2001. Opium production grew 46% under the taliban.
 

smashp

Platinum Member
Aug 30, 2003
2,443
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Originally posted by: Genx87
Originally posted by: azazyel
Originally posted by: Genx87

We have ~18,000 troops in Afghanistan, how is that cutting and running? What was the size of the initial invasion force?

Well, I don't know how many were there originally but we need more there now. Just take a look at the output of Opium since we invaded. As of now it has exceeded prewar heights. This means more funding for the drug lords and terrorists.

Someobody posted a link that showed the only year opium production was lower than it is now is in 2001. Opium production grew 46% under the taliban.



uuuhhhh what


JALALABAD, Afghanistan (February 15, 2001 8:19 p.m. EST

U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has nearly wiped out opium production in Afghanistan -- once the world's largest producer -- since banning poppy cultivation last summer.

A 12-member team from the U.N. Drug Control Program spent two weeks searching most of the nation's largest opium-producing areas and found so few poppies that they do not expect any opium to come out of Afghanistan this year.

"We are not just guessing. We have seen the proof in the fields," said Bernard Frahi, regional director for the U.N. program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He laid out photographs of vast tracts of land cultivated with wheat alongside pictures of the same fields taken a year earlier -- a sea of blood-red poppies.

A State Department official said Thursday all the information the United States has received so far indicates the poppy crop had decreased, but he did not believe it was eliminated.

Last year, Afghanistan produced nearly 4,000 tons of opium, about 75 percent of the world's supply, U.N. officials said. Opium -- the milky substance drained from the poppy plant -- is converted into heroin and sold in Europe and North America. The 1999 output was a world record for opium production, the United Nations said -- more than all other countries combined, including the "Golden Triangle," where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet.

Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, banned poppy growing before the November planting season and augmented it with a religious edict making it contrary to the tenets of Islam.

The Taliban, which has imposed a strict brand of Islam in the 95 percent of Afghanistan it controls, has set fire to heroin laboratories and jailed farmers until they agreed to destroy their poppy crops.

The U.N. surveyors, who completed their search this week, crisscrossed Helmand, Kandahar, Urzgan and Nangarhar provinces and parts of two others -- areas responsible for 86 percent of the opium produced in Afghanistan last year, Frahi said in an interview Wednesday. They covered 80 percent of the land in those provinces that last year had been awash in poppies.

This year they found poppies growing on barely an acre here and there, Frahi said. The rest -- about 175,000 acres -- was clean.

"We have to look at the situation with careful optimism," said Sandro Tucci of the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna, Austria.

He said indications are that no poppies were planted this season and that, as a result, there hasn't been any production of opium -- but that officials would keep checking.

The State Department counternarcotics official said the department would make its own estimate of the poppy crop. Information received so far suggests there will be a decrease, but how much is not yet clear, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"We do not think by any stretch of the imagination that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has been eliminated. But we, like the rest of the world, welcome positive news."

The Drug Enforcement Administration declined to comment.

No U.S. government official can enter Afghanistan because of security concerns stemming from the presence of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Poppies are harvested in March and April, which is why the survey was done now. Tucci said it would have been impossible for the poppies to have been harvested already.

The areas searched by the U.N. surveyors are the most fertile lands under Taliban control. Other areas, though they are somewhat fertile, have not traditionally been poppy growing areas and farmers are struggling to raise any crops at all because of severe drought. The rest of the land held by the Taliban is mountainous or desert, where poppies could not grow.

Karim Rahimi, the U.N. drug control liaison in Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province, said farmers were growing wheat or onions in fields where they once grew poppies.

"It is amazing, really, when you see the fields that last year were filled with poppies and this year there is wheat," he said.

The Taliban enforced the ban by threatening to arrest village elders and mullahs who allowed poppies to be grown. Taliban soldiers patrolled in trucks armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers. About 1,000 people in Nangarhar who tried to defy the ban were arrested and jailed until they agreed to destroy their crops.

Signs throughout Nangarhar warn against drug production and use, some calling it an "illicit phenomenon." Another reads: "Be drug free, be happy."

Last year, poppies grew on 12,600 acres of land in Nangarhar province. According to the U.N. survey, poppies were planted on only 17 acres there this season and all were destroyed by the Taliban.

"The Taliban have done their work very seriously," Frahi said.

But the ban has badly hurt farmers in one of the world's poorest countries, shattered by two decades of war and devastated by drought.

Ahmed Rehman, who shares less than three acres in Nangarhar with his three brothers, said the opium he produced last year on part of the land brought him $1,100.

This year, he says, he will be lucky to get $300 for the onions and cattle feed he planted on the entire parcel.

"Life is very bad for me this year," he said. "Last year I was able to buy meat and wheat and now this year there is nothing."

But Rehman said he never considered defying the ban.

"The Taliban were patrolling all the time. Of course I was afraid. I did not want to go to jail and lose my freedom and my dignity," he said, gesturing with dirt-caked hands.

Shams-ul-Haq Sayed, an officer of the Taliban drug control office in Jalalabad, said farmers need international aid.

"This year was the most important for us because growing poppies was part of their culture, and the first years are always the most difficult," he said.

Tucci said discussions are under way on how to help the farmers.

Western diplomats in Pakistan have suggested the Taliban is simply trying to drive up the price of opium they have stockpiled. The State Department official also said Afghanistan could do more by destroying drug stockpiles and heroin labs and arresting producers and traffickers.

Frahi dismissed that as "nonsense" and said it is drug traffickers and shopkeepers who have stockpiles. Two pounds of opium worth $35 last year are now worth as much as $360, he said.

Mullah Amir Mohammed Haqqani, the Taliban's top drug official in Nangarhar, said the ban would remain regardless of whether the Taliban received aid or international recognition.

"It is our decree that there will be no poppy cultivation. It is banned forever in this country," he said. "Whether we get assistance or not, poppy growing will never be allowed again in our country
 

jpeyton

Moderator in SFF, Notebooks, Pre-Built/Barebones
Moderator
Aug 23, 2003
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Originally posted by: Genx87
Originally posted by: azazyel
Originally posted by: Genx87

We have ~18,000 troops in Afghanistan, how is that cutting and running? What was the size of the initial invasion force?

Well, I don't know how many were there originally but we need more there now. Just take a look at the output of Opium since we invaded. As of now it has exceeded prewar heights. This means more funding for the drug lords and terrorists.

Someobody posted a link that showed the only year opium production was lower than it is now is in 2001. Opium production grew 46% under the taliban.

Yes, until 2001 when the Taliban banned opium production. We removed the Taliban, thus we removed the ban. Production today is almost 20 times higher than it was under the Taliban ban. Afghanistan now supplies almost 85% of the worlds supply of opium.
 

azazyel

Diamond Member
Oct 6, 2000
5,872
1
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Originally posted by: smashp
uuuhhhh what


JALALABAD, Afghanistan (February 15, 2001 8:19 p.m. EST

U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has nearly wiped out opium production in Afghanistan -- once the world's largest producer -- since banning poppy cultivation last summer.


Yes, the Taliban destroyed the opium IN 2001 before 9/11, now it's back in full swing since our ocupation.
 

Future Shock

Senior member
Aug 28, 2005
968
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0
Originally posted by: jpeyton
Originally posted by: Future Shock
Nuclear devices have nuclear fingerprints and are traceable...and it would SUCK for your country to have theirs on that bomb...I'm sorry, did I say "your country"? I meant "your smouldering hole in the ground"...

Future Shock

So we're going to nuke Russia, eh? Seeing as how Russia currently has the largest unsecured stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. That should work out nicely for both parties; I'm sure the American people will enjoy fireballs engulfing every major city in the country.

Bombing Saudi Arabia is always another classic retarded idea from the right-wing loonies on this forum. I'm sure they'd love to pay $20/gallon for gas as much as the next guy.

Let's just bomb Afghanistan again and do it over. Who cares about being right; it's all about dropping some bombs and killing some people, doesn't matter if they even know where the US is on a map.

Except that Russian bombs have anti-tamper devices and coded triggers, much like ours do (although not as good). And those codes are in Russian commanders hands, who fear Muslim rebels at their borders as much as we do. And due to some very pro-active American involvement a decade ago, nearly all of those nukes have been secured or deactivated.

There IS a fair amount of unsecured nuclear material in the former USSR, but then you have the slight problem of formulating a bomb - easier written about than done, especially if you only get one test. That's why a dirty bomb is the most likely scenario - but most simulations of dirty bombs going off in Manhattan show less direct contamination and damage than you might think - not an easy task to clean up, but one that we could manage for a few tens of billions. And the casualty figures aren't too much higher than 9/11s...at least from what I've seen (you never know the top secret figures, do we?)

And if you read my forum posts, you will realize that I'm far from a right winger...but I do believe that the developing world has to learn the same fear of Assured Destruction that balanced the US and USSR off for so many years - you go nuclear, we'll go nuclear in a heartbeat. The Porcupine Theory, as I've refered to it in another thread.

Future Shock
 

maluckey

Platinum Member
Jan 31, 2003
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From a Law Enforcement prospective.....It is naive to think that you can prevent most crimes. Even more so to tell yourself that you are safe from crime, no matter how many cops or soldiers are out there. Wars can be deterred only to a limited extent, and then only because the goal is economic, not to spread hate or terror.

A terrorist attack by it's very nature is almost impossible to stop before the fact so long as the atttack planners are skilled and cautious. This would be the same despite having double the police and intelligence capacity that the United States has now. Deterrence goes only so far, then you are in a Martial Law/Police State attitude. Spies criminals and malcontents, and even an assaaination attempt happened under Hitlers Germany. Spies and terrorists still confound the Mossad, arguably the best of the best in intelligence.

If Al-Queda bombed the U.S. Capitol building and killed all of congress, we would have had to do the dame thing that we are doing now. The only difference would be where, not how. The where and why are still not addressed.

Upgrade all the intelligence and police forces in the world, and it would'nt change the "Why" that they do what they do. To stop that you have to begin in their own community and work up with education and hope...
 

EatSpam

Diamond Member
May 1, 2005
6,423
0
0
Originally posted by: Genx87
Originally posted by: Czar
Originally posted by: Genx87
Let me guess, a unified front for 18 months, then opportunists start planting those seeds of doubt and we go back to fighting internally like children.

would depend if it were done like Afghanistan or done like Iraq, its up to those in control

From the people on the left neither has been a success.

Afghanistan would have been more of a success if Dubya hadn't wasted resources trying to show up Daddy and protecting Israel. He could he enriched Haliburton just as easily in Afghanistan.
 

CycloWizard

Lifer
Sep 10, 2001
12,348
1
81
Originally posted by: maluckey
From a Law Enforcement prospective.....It is naive to think that you can prevent most crimes. Even more so to tell yourself that you are safe from crime, no matter how many cops or soldiers are out there. Wars can be deterred only to a limited extent, and then only because the goal is economic, not to spread hate or terror.

A terrorist attack by it's very nature is almost impossible to stop before the fact so long as the atttack planners are skilled and cautious. This would be the same despite having double the police and intelligence capacity that the United States has now. Deterrence goes only so far, then you are in a Martial Law/Police State attitude. Spies criminals and malcontents, and even an assaaination attempt happened under Hitlers Germany. Spies and terrorists still confound the Mossad, arguably the best of the best in intelligence.

If Al-Queda bombed the U.S. Capitol building and killed all of congress, we would have had to do the dame thing that we are doing now. The only difference would be where, not how. The where and why are still not addressed.

Upgrade all the intelligence and police forces in the world, and it would'nt change the "Why" that they do what they do. To stop that you have to begin in their own community and work up with education and hope...
:beer: