nuclear terrorism

Obama advisor: The threat of nuclear terrorism constitutes one of the greatest threats to our national security

excerpt from "Briefing by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Assistant to President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security John Brennan"

States News Service, 12 April 2010

"The threat of nuclear terrorism is real, it is serious, it is growing, and it constitutes one of the greatest threats to our national security and, indeed, to global security.

Over the past two decades there has been indisputable evidence that dozens of terrorist groups have actively sought some type of weapon of mass effect. Relative to other such potential weapons -- which include biological, chemical, radiological -- the consequences and impact of a nuclear attack would be the most devastating as well as the most lasting.

Thus, the ability to obtain a nuclear weapon and to use it is the ultimate and most prized goal of terrorist groups. Al Qaeda is especially notable for its longstanding interest in acquiring weapons-useable nuclear material and the requisite expertise that would allow it to develop a yield producing improvised nuclear device.

New York Times Misleads on Taliban Role in Opium Trade by Jeremy Hammond

New York Times Misleads on Taliban Role in Opium Trade

The New York Times and other major U.S. media sources commonly report on the production of opium in Afghanistan as though it were under the control of the Taliban. The facts on the ground, however, tell a different story. Who dominates the Afghan opium trade? Foreign Policy Journal investigates.

November 29, 2008

By Jeremy R. Hammond

The New York Times reported this week that the Taliban have cut back on poppy cultivation and is stockpiling opium, grossly overstating the group’s role in the Afghanistan drug trade.

“Afghanistan has produced so much opium in recent years,” the Times reported Thursday, “that the Taliban are cutting poppy cultivation and stockpiling raw opium in an effort to support prices and preserve a major source of financing for the insurgency, Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations drug office, says.”

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