Which candidate best matches your stance on the issues?

[Centrehalf]

Ports are incalculably vulnerable.

A shipboard smuggled 20-KT device (peanuts in this game--but easy for small powers)--Nagasaki-size--would flatten the whole of Manhattan Island--or the Los Angeles Basin. That is their dream and their goal. Always has been.

And--who would you strike in retaliation?

A 20 KT device is easily detectable.

As for who to retaliate against, I guess we'd have to wait to read the signature if it ever happens to make that determination

 

[Johnny Tremain]

A 20 KT device is easily detectable.

As for who to retaliate against, I guess we'd have to wait to read the signature if it ever happens to make that determination

Very bad guess.
And--quite wrong.
Remember--plant one on a cargo ship.

 

[Centrehalf]

Very bad guess.
And--quite wrong.
Remember--plant one on a cargo ship.

Radiation sources much smaller than this are routinely detected every single day in this country. Try again.

 

[Johnny Tremain]

Radiation sources much smaller than this are routinely detected every single day in this country. Try again.

Adequate shielding on a cargo ship would prevent this.
Trust me. The Pentagon would.

 

[Centrehalf]

Trust me. You're wrong.

 

[Johnny Tremain]

Trust me. You're wrong.

We are each--entitled to our own opinion.

 

[PLC1]

A 20 KT device is easily detectable.

As for who to retaliate against, I guess we'd have to wait to read the signature if it ever happens to make that determination

It is easily detectable if we have the equipment in place to detect it. Do we? How hard would it really be to smuggle a nuke into one of our ports?

And, as Johnny asks, who would we retaliate against? Al Qaeda? some other group of Islamic nutters out to slay the infidel? who ?

 

[Centrehalf]

It is easily detectable if we have the equipment in place to detect it. Do we? How hard would it really be to smuggle a nuke into one of our ports?

And, as Johnny asks, who would we retaliate against? Al Qaeda? some other group of Islamic nutters out to slay the infidel? who ?

Yes, we do have the equipment. Johnny also made the mistake of believing that we wait to scan until a ship reaches its terminal point and that we focus on the ships. Given the large number of ships but the relative scarcity of deep water ports AND fissionable material, it doesn't make sense to focus on the ships, does it?

As far as retaliation, I've already answered that.

 

[PLC1]

Yes, we do have the equipment. Johnny also made the mistake of believing that we wait to scan until a ship reaches its terminal point and that we focus on the ships. Given the large number of ships but the relative scarcity of deep water ports AND fissionable material, it doesn't make sense to focus on the ships, does it?

As far as retaliation, I've already answered that.

Let's hope you're right and the government is more on top of the issue of smuggled nukes than it is on top of most issues.

So, we'd retaliate against the country that made the nuke, regardless of who sent it to us?

 

[Centrehalf]

Let's hope you're right and the government is more on top of the issue of smuggled nukes than it is on top of most issues.

So, we'd retaliate against the country that made the nuke, regardless of who sent it to us?

We'd have a pretty good idea of who was involved. The country that made it may not be the one who sent it to us but we're on top of the relationships in this field and we track the movement of this material. It's not anywhere near as easy to attack someone with this material as some would like to believe.

 

[PLC1]

We'd have a pretty good idea of who was involved. The country that made it may not be the one who sent it to us but we're on top of the relationships in this field and we track the movement of this material. It's not anywhere near as easy to attack someone with this material as some would like to believe.

I would like to believe that you're right. I'd also like to believe that other terrorist attacks are, if not impossible, then extremely difficult and that the government is on top of the problem. What I'd like to believe, what I hope is so, and what is true aren't always one and the same.

Exactly, how would we retaliate in a meaningful way against Al Qaeda if they were to send a nuke our way, or, say for example, send a suicide squad just to shoot people at random all over the country? They aren't afraid to die, after all, so long as they can take some of us infidels along with them.

How effective do you think our retaliation for the attack on the world trade center was?

 

[Centrehalf]

How effective do you think our retaliation for the attack on the world trade center was?

As far as al-queda, we'd look at the signature of the bomb and deal with those who made it and/or those who the material was transferred to. Remember the Anthrax scare and how we knew where it came from? Nuclear material works basically the same way.

Our retaliation for 9/11? I think it was severely hampered by the loss of the Northern Alliance as an effective military and governing force, and that happened early on. Without that loss, we would have been out of Afghanistan several years now.

 

[Cruella]

Keeping a huge military for the purpose of employing people, is not the American way and nonsensical..[/quot]

then where would you suggest that all those millions of people employed by defense contractors find jobs?

 

[Johnny Tremain]

It is easily detectable if we have the equipment in place to detect it. Do we? How hard would it really be to smuggle a nuke into one of our ports?

And, as Johnny asks, who would we retaliate against? Al Qaeda? some other group of Islamic nutters out to slay the infidel? who ?

Just make a solemn promise to turn Mecca and Riyadh and that god-forsaken Dubai (Sodom & Gomorrah) into a blob of glowing white-hot glass.

 

[Johnny Tremain]

Just make a solemn promise to turn Tehran, Mecca and Riyadh and that god-forsaken Dubai (Sodom & Gomorrah) into a blob of glowing white-hot glass.

Isn't that what THEY did to the people at the World Trade Center?