Deltanine

How many people would a so called "dirty bomb" kill? Hundreds? Thousands? Maybe millions?

"I don't think it would kill anybody," says Dr Theodore Rockwell, an authority on radiation, in an interview for "The Power of Nightmares." "You'll have trouble finding a serious report that would claim otherwise." The American department of energy, Rockwell continues, has simulated a dirty bomb explosion, "and they calculated that the most exposed individual would get a fairly high dose [of radiation], not life-threatening." And even this minor threat is open to question. The test assumed that no one fled the explosion for one whole year.

Much of the currently perceived threat from international terrorism, the series argues, "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media.

"In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power."

Politicians know that fear is the best way to control the population - and get re-elected.

Follow up:

The Power of Nightmares seeks to overturn much of what is widely believed about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. The latter, it argues, is not an organised international network. It does not have members or a leader. It does not have "sleeper cells". It does not have an overall strategy. In fact, it barely exists at all, except as an idea about cleansing a corrupt world through religious violence.

The documentary points out that al-Qaeda did not even have
a name until the American government decided to prosecute Bin Laden in his absence and had to use anti-Mafia laws that required the existence of a named criminal organisation.

In the United Kingdom the Home Office's own statistics for arrests and convictions of suspected terrorists since September 11 2001 show that of the 664 people detained up to the end of last month, only 17 have been found guilty. Of these, the majority were Irish Republicans, Sikh militants or members of other groups with no connection to Islamist terrorism. Nobody has been convicted who is a proven member of al-Qaeda.

Groups of usually young Arabic men have been arrested for belonging to "Al Qaeda sleeper cells" on the flimsiest of evidence - in one case the evidence was a friend had returned to Bahrain and sent an email informing them he was getting married and that they would be seeing less of him in the future. This was interpreted by the spooks as "go ahead and conduct your suicide mission." Their arrest was amongst those heralded by Bush as progress being made against Al Qaeda, yet these young men eventually (and without any media fanfare) had all charges dropped against them - since this email was the only evidence against them.
Other flimsy evidence held against other innocent men was a typical home video of a trip to Disneyland, doodles by an ex tenant, and a map of Edinburgh which was presented as a plan to attack during Hogmanay (actually an Australian tourist had circled the places he planned to visit, and inadvertently left behind under their couch).

The neocons in power now in the Bush administration, such as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Donanld Rumsfeld have been in previous administrations, exaggerating threats and promoting fear. For instance back when the Soviet Union was the "evil empire" the neocons set up “Team B”, which systematically exaggerrated both the offensive capability and the aggressive intentions of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. These included the assertion, based on no evidence whatsoever that the Soviets had developed a non-acoustic submarine detection system, the reasoning being that since they didn’t have a working acoustic version they must have had a secret ultra-modern technology that the US didn’t know about! Wolfowitz, Perle, and Rumsfeld are again controlling the population with their lies to promote fear.