Homeland Security = FAIL

The United Kingdom's Home Office is regressing in its dark concerns about terrorist CBRN incidents. There's no evidence that there is an imminent attack, but... it's not a question of if...

There is an increased risk terrorists could get hold of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons to attack the UK, the Home Office has said.

The assessment comes as Home Secretary Jacqui Smith unveiled a new UK strategy to tackle an evolved terrorist threat.
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Ms Smith said to fight this evolved threat, the UK could not just rely on police and intelligence agencies.

She said "terrorists will try to stay one step ahead of us" and that counter-terrorism was "no longer something you can do behind closed doors and in secret".

The home secretary said Whitehall needed "to enlist the widest possible range of support", and the new UK terror strategy includes training 60,000 workers in vigilance for terrorist activity and what to do in an attack, among them shop and hotel workers.

Yes, because the UK has never faced a terrorist threat before... From the Times:

The Government outlined the threat facing Britain from new technologies and the splintering of terrorist groups in a 167-page document, which said that al-Qaeda was short of money and had failed to create a mass movement to overthrow some governments and change the policies of others. It said, though, that al-Qaeda was likely to fragment and that Britain might come under threat from “self-starting” terrorist organisations or individuals.

Terrorists will have access to new technology and could become capable of conducting more lethal operations, the report said. “Contemporary terrorist organisations aspire to use chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. Changing technology and the theft and smuggling of CBRN materials make this aspiration more realistic than it may have been in the recent past,” it said.

Asked whether there was a greater threat of a dirty bomb attack than there was five years ago, Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said: “There is the potential, given the international situation, what we believe to be the aspirations of some international terrorists, that it could be.”

What horseshit. They have no evidence, no intel indications, and the one terrorist group that was interested in CBRN hazards is - by their own assessment - fragmenting (although I would have said that AQ is happy as pigs in shit in Iraq and Afghanistan, using conventional weapons). It's just likely because CBRN material exists and global smuggling takes place - but it's still the faceless "terrorists" that no one can definitively identify as having these motivations and capabilities.

There are a few people just a little too jumpy in the United Kingdom, which is unusual, given that their officials are still trying to get over its "Saddam can use chemical weapons in 45 minutes" statement in 2002. Now they have their own doom-saying Chertoff in place. They're even jumping at sights of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. No, seriously - see the story.Maybe there's an epidemic of killer rabbits, too.

Hey, UK Home Office? The year 2001 called, it wants its threat assessment back.

Comments

[Leper]

Its interesting that a nation which was capable of responsibly reacting to domestic terrorism from the IRA now overreacts to a similar threat from Islamic terrorists.

[Ray]

The Anti-Terrorist Security Industry provides
60,000jobs at least. that's one reason to encourage it to develop further- as a permanent policy (regardless of terrorism).
On the whole, that's an army to back, if not sympathise with, our government's creeping controls.
I'm more afraid of our Government's growing Orwellian policies, and Big Brother cameras in this country than of theoretical attacks (I know it's possib;e at any time, but can't we British have the rights of freedom instead of mere privileges? Must restrictions on freedom become a way of life. The coming generations will accept this as normal.
We've had our share of numerous (repeat, numerous) bomb etc attacks, and our not so recent history had bombs raining down day and night. I know- I was there. This age is different, but the constant rain of fear-inducing rhetoric on possible terrorist attacks, and the demand/persuasions by our government, from the public at large, for ever more sacrifices of freedom to be be spied upon (by whom? we never know) throughout the media, makes the public shy away from approving the few sensible security measures already in place. The developing and pending control measures make life increasingly more miserable psychologically, occupationally and socially than it need be. It's counter-productive.
R.