U.S. to scan millions of containers

U.S. to scan millions of containers

www.usatoday.com

The specter of a nuclear bomb, hidden in a cargo container, detonating in an American port has prompted Congress to require 100% screening of U.S.-bound ships at their more than 600 foreign starting points. Scanning containers at their point of origin in other countries is a highlight of that law, intended to fulfill recommendations of the 9/11 Commission for safeguarding the United States from terrorist attack.

"If a terrorist manages to conceal a weapon of mass destruction in a shipping container...

(visit the link for the full news article)


Mod Edit: Removed copy/paste over the 500 character limit.

[edit on 27-8-2007 by UM_Gazz]

Well, isn’t this a classic case of shutting the stable after the horses have bolted? What if terrorists have already been able to smuggle a ‘dirty’ bomb inside one of the many ports in the US? They’ve had plenty of time to do so.

So the scenario could be something like this:

> Nuclear bomb loaded onto a shipping container from somewhere in the Middle East.

> Transported and unloaded as domestic cargo at a port in the US.

> Slipped out of the dockyard after cursory inspection. Not detected due to deep lead lining of the container housing the bomb and due to other ‘adequate’ precautionary measures taken to avoid detection.

> Transported to a hidden location by Sleeper Cells of the terrorist group, which in most likelihood is the Al Qaeda.

> Recon of likely targets including VAs (Vulnerable Areas), approaches, routes of egress, communications, logistics and transportation.

> Detailed and final plan ready including H-Hour.

> Execution.

Result? If all goes according to plan, then a small bomb of nominal yield set off in a populated area, would result in thousands of casualties and nuclear contamination for years.

Edit to add: After reading a couple of posts regarding the Headline of the article, it was from here....

www.hindu.com...

The first part of the article in the Hindu has been taken from...
www.usatoday.com
(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 27-8-2007 by mikesingh]

Sensationalizing the headline?

Here is the correct one :

U.S. to scan millions of containers

It is something that should have been done long ago,

you may be right on one point that a device has made it in the country already, but please can we stop with the headlines?

And you know people this is not only good for stopping WMD's smuggling, this could really help to reduce human trafficking and possibly save many lives, as well as reduce a source of overseas illegal immigration.

Not on the ship, you jihadist fools!

UNDER the dang thing!

It's called "Using Available Cover", idiots!

If you've only got one bomb, one "egg" in your basket, you don't hide it in the first, and most accessible place your enemies are likely to look for it!

What is this insane, and inane, obession the government has with shipping containers?

Do they really think that our "enemies", who have proven themselves to be not only intelligent, but fiendishly innovative, time and again, to be so stupid as to risk an asset as valuable as a nuclear weapon to possible discovery by port security?

And having, Allah willing, eluded port security scans, to further risk detection by then attempting to transport and, again, Allah take pity on the fools!, trying to hide said device from the authorities? For how long?

We're PAYING these people to protect us???

You've somehow managed to acquire a workable nuclear weapon. You managed to deliver it into a port. Ports, no matter what country they are located in, are strategic military and economic targets in their own right.

Why would you pass up such a target to risk detection, capture, loss of your weapon and defeat at the hands of the infidels for the entire jihad, by trying to move your device to a "softer target"?

The very idea that AQ has even been able (or will be able) to acquire nuclear weapons is stretching the bounderies of credibility. That they would likely deploy such a device via shipping container is purely ridiculous.

I don't think any terrorist has a nuclear bomb within the United States (or any western country for that matter). If they did, they would detonate it as soon as possible to avoid it being found and seized before they could use it.

I just don't think they'd sit on something like that, waiting for a certain date or something.

[edit on 8/27/2007 by djohnsto77]

Originally posted by JacKatMtn
Sensationalizing the headline?

Here is the correct one :

U.S. to scan millions of containers

yes funny, I thought news items had to have the actual title of the news article for the header. I had one of mine changed by a mod once for not doing that...

???

Originally posted by JacKatMtn
Sensationalizing the headline?

Here is the correct one :

U.S. to scan millions of containers

Pardon, but your slip is showing. You see, I read at least five news papers everyday in the morning before and during breakfast. This headline isn't mine but from a newspaper. Here it is...

U.S. fears nuclear attack, steps up alert

So what's correct or isn't, is a matter for the news papers to decide. I can't ask them to change headlines to make it less sensational, can I?

Cheers!

Bhadhidar, youve got a very good point.

I cant imagine it would be to hard to weld together a airtight compartment on the hull of a ship.

very interesting...

Accept, the only thing is, why wait for it to be searched 'on port'

surely not every country sending out goods on freighters is scanned.

why not slip it in, wait till the ship enters thus port, then boom.

a few thousand dead infidels, and many more to suffer later.

...Because they don't have nukes. Or dirty bombs. Or trans-Atlantic boats or airplanes. Or, for that matter, people willing to arrive through US Immigration & find the goods to explode themselves...or shoot anyone from a bell-tower. Or drop '___' into water supplies. And, evidently, they don't have the resources to spoink targets with rubberbands in a Santa Maria parking lot.

Whatever "Al Qaida" is, they're, untrained, disorganised and underfunded.

If Al Qaida is at all organised, they're happy picking their targets in the war of attrition that is the USA's "Iraq Front".

I agree with the poster who said (to paraphrase) "if they had nukes, they'd use them--not wait for a 'special date'"...or other proclamation.

--Fugs

The only one who can have nuclear weapons and detonate it inside the US is the US government itself.

If there was really a threat, the whole security thing would have been enforced on september 12. Steps like closing the borders, deports the illegal aliens, screen all cargos, jail all gang members of MS-13, ect... but no, the mesures were the current police state for the average citizen, not for any terrorist.

And if the threat was real, the terrorists would smuggle it from Mexico or just send it in a container to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Houston or any big city with a port... then you put a GPS on it, and when the GPS stops and it's loaded on the port, detonate it by remote control.

[edit on 27-8-2007 by Vitchilo]

Originally posted by mikesingh

Pardon, but your slip is showing. You see, I read at least five news papers everyday in the morning before and during breakfast. This headline isn't mine but from a newspaper. Here it is...

U.S. fears nuclear attack, steps up alert

So what's correct or isn't, is a matter for the news papers to decide. I can't ask them to change headlines to make it less sensational, can I?

Cheers!

You put a spin on it; you added a headline from another news outlet, to the same story, thus sensationalising your whole story as a collective. How was someone, anyone to know you read several newspapers, I read several newspapers this morning, but I did not start running around telling people parts of each newspaper, thus spinning its content.

You also added usa today as your source, no newspapers in the original.

You would do well, with your collective headlines and scare tactics, working for the current US Government.

Yours is the only slip showing.

[edit on 27-8-2007 by InterWeb]

I agree, I think theres more chance of the US government detonating a nuke or radioactive device themselves within the US and with falsified evidence blaming someone else.

Heres some news articles that makes you wonder if its to happen soon -

www.wesh.com...
Titled "Local Troops Deploy to Nations Capital"
August 24th 2007

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Members of the 1st Battalion 265 Air Defense Artillery have mobilized and are on a plane headed first to Ft. Bliss, then for federal active duty in the capital region.

The troops will be deployed for a year.

Kinda makes you think they are expecting something within the next year dont it? And why Air Defence Artillery? I dont think they are preparing for terrorists as much as they are preparing for Iran or China or someone of that calibre.

Here's another one for ya -

www.rense.com...
Titled "Chinese Police Race to find Stolen Uranium"

Chinese police are trying to trace eight kilograms of stolen uranium ore that was being carried around in a plastic bag and a sack, as a group of men tried to sell it on the blackmarket.

Four men from Hunan province have been arrested and are on trial in Guangzhou but a fifth accomplice, who allegedly has the bulk of the highly radioactive uranium ore, has not been found.

The ore, comprising U-235 and U-238 uranium, poses a serious public health risk.

China's New Express Daily said the men were farmers and miners ignorant of the health risk of exposure to uranium. One of the men reportedly used a home sieve to "refine" the uranium ore. They were attempting to sell the haul for 1.6 million yuan ($258,000) per kilogram.

Are Chinese authorities scared that any scare of this type in China and a possible dirty bomb attack on the USA could be used with fabricated evidence to blame China, leading to action against them too?

Also, is this also proof of the Mid-East war about to spread -

uruknet.info...
Titled "Zionist Mossad icreasing presence in Western Iraq"

August 26, 2007

In a dispatch posted on its website Saturday, Quds Press reported that the head of the Union of Tribes of Western Iraq in the area of the Upper Euphrates near the Syrian border had disclosed that the "Israeli" Mossad had increased its presence in those areas, beginning two months ago. He said that US forces are extending protection to the Mossad’s cars and headquarters in the area.

Shaykh Ahmad al-Khanjar, the Chairman of the Union of Tribes of Western Iraq, an organization of 13 Iraqi tribes, told Quds Press that four-wheel-drive GMC cars belonging to the Mossad are present in the areas of al-Hadithah and nearby al-Haqlaniyah, 'Anah, al-Qa’im, Jubbah, and other villages. He said that the "Israelis" have been there for several months under American protection.

The Mossad men, al-Khanjar said, wear civilian clothing (some of them including yarmulkes) and travel around western Iraq under American guard. He said that the Mossad operatives stay in the headquarters that the Americans have set up in the old Customs Building near the Syrian border, in the former Iraqi Army Camp in the area of al-Baghdadi, about 200km northwest of Baghdad, and at the phosphate mining complex.

This all makes it look like a fabricated incident is around the corner, Armed forces are in position and/or preparing contingencies for an expanded role within the mid east area, and I do beleive the US is fearing some sort of retaliatory missile strike on its capital with the mobilisation of these forces to DC.

It just keeps getting better dont it?



[edit on 27/8/07 by Melbourne_Militia]

The U.S. simply doesn't have anything in its nuclear weapons inventory that would be anything like a crude device a terrorist or rogue state could make. If something like this was manufactured here, many, many people would know about it and since it makes no sense that something like that would be made, I'm sure it would come out publicly if such a device was detonated.

This seems more like the police saying: "We are gonna be increasing our speedcontrol checks" and then after a while people slow down a bit, the police get bored and find something else to do and slowly but surely people WILL start to drive fast again...

I agree that it no terrorist with half his wits would conceal a bomb in a container, especially after this announcement.
Besides... why make the bomb an item on the side? Why not just make the entire ship the bomb? Seriously..

I hope the authors behind this initiative has thought beyond this first point to anticipate their enemies next step.

Last I read less thsn 1 % of containers are being scanned for a variety of reasons. We all know it only takes one dirty one to get through.
I would think ships could hide a lot of things on the outer hull which would elude US security or any other major port in North America..

Having the right relationships with Countries with essential nuclear materials and byproducts may go a lot further in securing such at their end.
Hit and miss during the US Import inspection processes I would think is a very big concern as well as the ever present fear of something terrible coming in through the back door.

Russia
N Korea
Pakistan
Iran (tba)
China (future possibility)

are places of worry. Hatred, money, poor Security of nuclear materials is something to fear from the listed Countries, probably others too.

Dallas

Originally posted by djohnsto77
The U.S. simply doesn't have anything in its nuclear weapons inventory that would be anything like a crude device a terrorist or rogue state could make. If something like this was manufactured here, many, many people would know about it and since it makes no sense that something like that would be made, I'm sure it would come out publicly if such a device was detonated.

Well that's really stretching things by a long shot. Our nuclear weapons programs are the highest-guarded secrets we have; none of this stuff is coming out in USA Today.

That said, nukes have detonation signatures that are traceable; that's why you have Steven Jones suggesting that you just put some fallout in a baggie and send it to him for analysis (!) so no, you won't see a US-made nuke go off in the US. However, ...

So what are they waiting for?

There is nothing out there that wil be detonated by regular people. And you all know what i mean.

I'm sure there's a set date. Lets keep an eye on the comings and goings of people in governments.

Originally posted by InterWeb
You would do well, with your collective headlines and scare tactics, working for the current US Government.

How do you know I ain't? Could be the CIA, FBI, DSA, NSA, DLA, DSS, DTRA, OGE, etc etc! So? That headline was indeed a 'scare' headline so that people like you start preparing for the worst case scenario - a nuclear explosion with ground zero in or near YOUR neighborhood! And that ain't sci-fi. It's not the question of 'if', but 'when'. You seem to be living in a fool's paradise, mate.

Don't tell me then, that you weren't warned! You'll be surprised that some very good brains have joined the AQ bandwagon. And you can be sure that they are up to no good. Aren't you wondering how a rag tag circus like the AQ is holding close to 180,000 American troops at bay? Because you haven't fathomed the wily, twisted, fanatic terrorist brain. Like were you aware of the thought process, cunning and tactical brilliance of these dudes involved in 9/11? You couldn't even think of this option. They did.

Bottom Line - It's better to be safe than sorry, what?

Have a nice day!

I've just red an article about the North Korean government. In most countries drugsbussiness is owned by gangs while state authorities accept the activities in return for bribes, in Korea its the opposite.
Secret services and government authorities make heroine, crystal meth, sigarettes, counterfeit money, pistols, assault rifles, rocket launchers etc.
The products are shiped with large ships under "false" flags. In international waters the largers ones dont have to exit[so juridicial not traceable], then the products gets shiped onto smaller vessels which then deliver the goods to ports in Russia, Chna, US and Europa. This is just a small indication of how easily they've shiped different things into the US. The smuggling route through Mexico is also very plausible.
I only wonder if they can just wait and sit on their bomb[s] for the right time? and be patient with that situation..

[edit on 27-8-2007 by Foppezao]