Police officer: efforts to stop terrorist nuclear attack "bound to fail"

John Mayer - advocate, author, and activist - has hit out at the person responsible at ACPOS for protecting Scotland from nuclear or chemical attack.

Ian Dickinson, also Assistant Chief Constable with Lothian and Borders, last week said a nuclear attack was inevitable:

"These materials are undoubtedly out there, and undoubtedly will end up in terrorists' hands, and undoubtedly will be used by terrorists some time soon," he declared. "We must plan for failure and prepare for absolute terror."

However, Mayer took issue with this in a letter to the Sunday Herald:

I regard Ian Dickinson's comments as scaremongering at its worst. The depth of his analysis is that nuclear materials are "undoubtedly out there" and that these will "undoubtedly end up in terrorists' hands" and be used by them "soon".

Has the officer never heard of Senator Sam Nunn's Nuclear Threat Initiative? This is the highest level group in the world which constantly monitors the whereabouts and "signatures" of all the materials they know of which can be used as dirty bombs. The America, British, French and several other governments are busy detecting the remainder. When these security services have something to tell us, they will.

Dickinson obviously does not know that nuclear weapons are incredibly difficult to make and store, let alone use. It takes the resources of a state to build weapons of mass destruction. Further, there are plenty of satellites specifically looking for such efforts.

With the exception of 9/11, terrorists around the world have for decades operated at the level of "flour power" and plastic explosives. Has this officer not wondered why there have been no terrorists' technological advances in say, the last 10 years? Of course, he hasn't. Terrorists don't make advances on their own. Technical advances are known to everyone.

I regard it as dangerous to dignify the officer's comments with well-known facts or further analysis, so I won't. I only hope that other police officers will think before spouting such obvious drivel again.

Comments

[veritas]

I agree with your assessment, Osama. For one thing the profile of terrorists so far has been that they want publicity more than anything else - media splash and maximum shock and dramatic exposure. Not anonymous toxic events, drip, drip. Take the Glasgow would-be bombers, for example, and the warning, 'Those that would heal you will kill you'. If these folk had wanted just to kill people any old way, they could have done a Harold Shipman. But that would be cowardly, and terrorists must show courage and be martyrs, if, in their warped world, they are to reach paradise at the end of it. No, it doesn't fit at all.

[George Carty]

You may be interested in Freedom for Fission's page on terrorism.