Al Qaeda's second-string science (and media) talent search
Whatever happened to AlQaeda's A-Team of high tech hackers and Post-Doc's from Hell like Muhammad Atta, the literal architect of 9-11?
An official high on the list of Osama Bin Laden's surviving lieutenants is calling on wannabe weapons experts in the fields of "chemistry, physics, electronics, media and all other sciences - especially nuclear scientists" to come to Iraq to rectify the shocking lack of local talent and WMD's.
"We are in dire need of you," said Abu Hamza al-Muhajir - also known as Shiek al-Masri. "The field of jihad can satisfy your scientific ambitions, and the large American bases are good places to test your unconventional weapons, whether biological or dirty, as they call them." exhorted the hospitable Arab recruiting executive in an audio tape broadcast earlier this week, and aired on PBS evening news.
Shiek al-Masri called for new blood and next-generation Islamic ubergeeks after acknowledging Allied and Iraqi forces and authorities have thus far killed some 4,000 foreign jihadists in Iraq. Most estimates put Al Qeada's numbers below division strength .In 2004, Britain's Institute for Strategic Studies postulated that Al Qaeda had 18,000 committed combatants, and some Pentagon sources asserted fewer than 3,000 of the troops bin Laden trained in Afghanistan remained alive.
In 2004 I accordingly observed:
"After the failed 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Mohammad Atta applied himself to calculating the energy ten tons of blazing jet fuel could deliver to the towers’ hearts. He chose the moment of his death as wisely as his target and his impact velocity, for the dead man Osama bin Laden now styles “Commander-General” made us forget what he was not: a weapons expert. His inspired effort at grand theft aero transcended the failure of al-Qaeda to acquire the weapons of mass destruction that have obsessed us ever since...
However tall bin Laden may loom... it is increasingly clear that his arsenal is as phony as his army is small—its shelves are bare of expertise and materiel alike.But the War on Terror is anything but phony, and al-Qaeda is under withering attack by every means a hyperpower and its allies can devise."
-- 'Weaker than we think" The American Conservative December 6 2004
Baghdad was last attacked with 'dirty weapons' in 1258 , when the Mongol horde of Hulugu the Horrible catapulted dead horses over the city walls.
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