21st Century Weapons

So Osama is nowhere to be found in the Tora Bora area that the U.S. bombed for a month. Maybe they should just arrest the guy they used in the video (pictures here and here. Careful, the rhetoric is pretty thick on both pages. :-)

The bombing and low-grade ground support seems to be working so well, but there are always other options, other weapons and strategems to bring into play. However, the attack on Afghanistan went so well that there was talk of using the same playbook in a future invasion of Iraq.

The Daily News reports that U.S Weighing Assassination in terror fight, while Yahoo News reports that Officials Back Low-Yield Nuke Strike:

the Bush administration views a nuclear strike as “an intrinsic part’‘ of dealing with deeply entombed enemy targets and “is essentially doing all the preparation’‘ for a future full-scale research and development program for a new mini-nuclear warhead…</q>

That is correct. They said ‘nuke’. There’s a good post called Nuclear Morality by davidpalter on Plastic discussing it.

On other weapons fronts, CNN tells us in Official: CIA uses anthrax… that:

<q>The CIA uses anthrax in its bio-warfare program but the bacteria did not make it into tainted letters sent to two U.S. senators and several news organizations, an agency official said Sunday. … The confirmation that the CIA has anthrax comes less than a week after the U.S. Army admitted it has produced small amounts of the potentially deadly bacteria for years. … But, just as Army officials denied any connection to the anthrax letters, a CIA official said the anthrax detected in letters sent earlier this fall “absolutely did not” come from CIA labs.</q>

That’s right. Bioweapons and anthrax created by the CIA and the Army. The same strain that’s in the letters, but not the same anthrax, says the CIA. Trust them, eh? Raise you hand if you were somewhat surprised to hear that both the Army and the CIA have admitted publicly to creating bioweapons in recent years. Sure, they denied it for months. Why wouldn’t they? I’m pretty sure we’ve signed treaties and other such useless things to prevent bioweapons research.

And don’t forget about the Missile Defense System. The White House has issued another statement: President Announces Lucrative Post-ABM Defense Contracts.

<q>The first contract, for $4.2 billion, has been awarded to our good friends at the Northrop Grumman Corporation (nyse: NOC), who will be tasked with developing the propulsion systems for the next generation of satellite defense systems, which will, when completed in 2012, be upwards of 27% effective at neutralizing warheads deemed laughably obsolete in 2009.</q>

For the irony-impaired, that’s not the real White House site.