I'm sure everyone remembers the threat issued a couple weeks ago by Al Qaeda, where top personality (don't recall who) predicted 100,000 American dead. I immediatly started thinking about what would cause such casulties. I think a nuclear bomb is out of the question. If they could pull that off we need a total revamp in our security and intelligence. The most likely scenario I came up with was a poisoning of a resevoir. Then tonight I was flipping through channels I saw Fox News doing a piece on just that risk. How could we defend against such an attack? I know of plenty of resevoirs with NO protection at all.

My question(s) are these: How likely is this type of scenerio? How do we defend against this? What other types of things should we look for? Is it only a matter of time before we are attacked with Biological and or chemical agents?

I think the resiviour senerio is possible but we do monitor our water. We are also open to an attack on a chemical storage facility in or near a large city. . Stories lately reveal many are totally unguarded.

I posted a study by San Francisco and FEMA that projected 150,000 dead, if we are lucky, from a anthrax attack on the city. The workshop was 1997!

Since we know that Iraq had lots of weaponized anthrax and it has never been destroyed the chances are good that al-Qaeda may have acquired some of it.

Here is a link.

http://www.home.eznet.net/~kenberry/materi...nciscopaper.htm

Very good topic! I honestly doubt that we will see a chemical/biological attack in our country from Al-Qaeda. They don't have enough brains(scientists) to pull it off. Their only chance would be to buy it on the black market or something like that. I really don't think that poisoning rivers or treatment facilities would work. I see us losing men through a costly and timely effect known as-the war!. We have already lost 10,000(counting wounded as well) Since it roughly took that a year to "gain" those losses, then it is feasible to say that if this war on terror dragged on for another ten years, that we could face the same number of casualties. Granted, the theater of war might have to move to new areas-southeast asia, Syria, Iran, or some other middle eastern nation in order for those casualties to occur. My question is this---would we really have the resolve to fight after even 50,000??

I also don’t think there is much chance of another major attack in the United States, not because Al-Qaeda couldn’t come up with a means to launch another such attack, but rather there would seem to be little strategic value to a second attack.

My belief is that bin Laden’s objective for the original 9/11 attack was to provoke the United States into committing its military might to the Middle East where American troops could be picked off one by one through a long guerrilla war which would end up bankrupting the American economy. If this was bin Laden’s intent then so far his plan has worked perfectly.

Al-Qaeda would have little to gain from a second assault on America and a great deal to lose. For one thing, the United States is now isolated and anti-American feeling in the world is at an all time high. A second attack that killed a huge number of innocent Americans may very well result in world opinion once again turning sympathetic toward the United States just like after 9/11. This is definitely something Al-Qaeda does not want to see.

Second, another attack may well push America over the edge and force the United States to switch from conventional warfare to nuclear warfare.

I think the 100,000 number probably is a reference to the number of U.S. soldiers who will be killed in the Middle East over a period of years as the result of guerrilla warfare. Perhaps Al-Qaeda figured that about 50,000 U.S. soldiers were killed in Vietnam. Now America is involved militarily in both Iraq and Afghanistan so they multiplied 50,000 by 2 and came up with 100,000 dead.

I think your right on that one. While 100,000 sounds like a lot, it could accumulate very quickly. I think that we are well on pace towards hitting that numbe if current trends continue the way they are.

I guess some of you didn't read the articles on the attack claim. The Al Qaeda "commander" claimed it would be in a single attack that would shock the world.



100,000 dead claim

I think it is very likely that a single attack will either be Chem. /Bio or an attack on a chemical storage tank that will kill thousands in a major metropolitan area. We also know they have explored stealing a cargo jumbo jet to crash into a nuclear power plant.

If you read the 1997 San Francisco assessment of an anthrax attack on that city you can see what could happen. Anthrax or a biological could be released in a mall or from apartment windows in any major city. You would then literally have death blowing in the wind.

If they are going to attack before Christmas they could hit a couple of large mall and kill people AND cost our economy billions as people stay home.


These killers want to hurt us on our own soil and I believe they will do their best to do just that. Let’s hope and pray we can head them off.