Al-Qaida Fighting Dirty

Nuclear Terror: U.S. politicians were secretly told years ago that al-Qaida can build a "dirty bomb" — or worse. Is the warning of a nuclear or biological 9/11 enough? Or must we experience it?

On Wednesday, Britain's Daily Telegraph reported that classified U.S. government communications given to WikiLeaks reveal that the nuclear terrorism alarm bells have been ringing for years. For example:

• Two years ago, NATO warned that al-Qaida was planning to build roadside nuclear dirty bombs in Afghanistan.

• In 2008, Indian national security adviser M.K. Narayanan told Democratic Senate Foreign Relations Committee members Russ Feingold of Wisconsin (who lost re-election last year) and Robert Casey of Pennsylvania that India had discovered a "manifest attempt to get fissile material" by terrorists.

• Narayanan told the senators that jihadists have "enough physics to fabricate a crude bomb beyond a dirty bomb."

• The Indian official "lamented that national intelligence agencies lack a common understanding" — even after the 2006 Mumbai bombings involving planning and fundraising in nearly a dozen countries.

• Another 2008 U.S. cable revealed that the Pakistan Agricultural Research Center "houses a full range of viral and bacterial pathogens" such as anthrax, foot-and-mouth disease and brucellosis — under questionable security.

More interesting still, "On Iran, Narayanan asserted that India also wanted to prevent a nuclear weapons program, but he criticized the use of sanctions as ineffective, given the 'unique' Shiite ability to absorb punishment."

India apparently long ago knew that the Obama-Clinton "tough diplomacy" constituted no real toughness in the Islamists' eyes.

In "The Art of War," Sun Tzu warned, "If you do not know your enemies, or yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle." We clearly don't know our jihadist adversaries well enough and are blinded by free peoples' naive tendency to presume good will.

"Unless we are attentive to history, a terrorist organization will soon be able to assemble and place ... an A-bomb within a truck, ship, or container and deliver same to the heart of any number of U.S. cities," warned former U.S. government nuclear weapons designers Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman in their 2009 history of nuclear proliferation, "The Nuclear Express."

Reed and Stillman further believe that several "small and inefficient" atomic bombs destroying Washington and a few other well-chosen targets would be no less than an existential threat to the U.S., as radiation spread for hundreds of miles, killing multitudes.

They ask: "Would American society start to devour itself, hunting for further bombs-in-hiding, pursuing the perpetrators, and rioting for food, medical care, and protection — the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, times 10 million? Could al-Qaida sleeper cells then take advantage of the chaos," and even "impose Sharia law on what remained of the United States?"

It may seem unthinkable in a nation so deeply rooted in the rule of law and a Constitution that is the envy of the world. But wasn't 9/11 itself once unthinkable?