thedrifter
01-20-05, 06:12 AM
Books on Terrorism: The Good, The Bad and The Nonsense
January 20, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Tom Marzullo
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For those whose interests in the War on Terror push them towards reading whatever they find… be warned, for every nugget of gold there is garbage by the ton.
So, let’s take an informed walk through two recent offerings.
The first book I will critique purports to pertain to the issue of what we can expect out of the amalgamated terror organizations out there and is written by Dr. Paul L. Williams, titled ‘Osama’s Revenge,’ ISBN 1-59102-252-5.
Simply as a Health Physicist and beyond my reaction to its hyperbole on Islamist functionality through having some practical grounding in guerrilla/terrorist operations, a major bone I have to pick is the book’s coverage of the issues surrounding terrorists and nuclear weapons. The reliably informative portions of the book are only so by the occasional and seemingly random selection of decent materials it draws from… Dr. Theodore Taylor's assessment of the possibilities of nuclear weapons construction amongst them.
I rather strongly agree with Dr. Taylor’s assessment that putting together a working fission bomb is not that hard, especially if the mass/size-to-yield ratio is not a major concern.
For this kind of device and application it would actually be desirable to cause a much higher percentage than normal byproducts of such an incomplete or inefficient fission process consisting of unused fissionable material, fission byproducts and materials made radioactive by neutron activation into the non-activated physical debris kicked up by the blast making these particulates 'hotter' from a radiological standpoint. This melds well into the scenario I postulated in the very first public discussions on the subject of a denial of use result secondary to contamination dispersals desired by the terrorists.
As a participant in public discussions, I have previously mentioned the use of a cargo ship as one of the preferred delivery devices for such a construct due to the size and mass of such a crude device. For instance, if a smaller oil tanker is used, then the thousands of tons of crude oil that is scattered and burned by the blast would also be well contaminated by the inefficient fission process that uses up only a small percentage of the fissionable materials and so the resulting 'plume' would disperse these lighter, more highly contaminated particulates over a much farther area than the vaporized solids typically cast up by the blast that would precipitate out earlier, thereby greatly increasing the area contaminated.
The book’s categorization of "suitcase" or "nuclear demolitions" as the major ‘tactical' nuclear weapons of interest is plainly wrong. There were a great many 'tactical' nuclear weapons in the Soviet inventory, many of which lacked the redundant safeguards of strategic systems and were often poorly controlled by the chain of command. For instance, during the Cuban missile crisis the main major danger of war came not from the warheads on the strategic theater capable missiles that we recall, but rather from the nuclear-tipped short range missiles aboard the Russian small craft provided to the Cubans... and the skippers of each boat had the full ability to fire those weapons without consultation or approvals from higher authority. Tactical nuclear devices also include warheads that could be deployed by artillery, short-range missiles or light aircraft.... all of which fit well into the category of ready-made devices that are highly desirable from the standpoint of the Islamist terrorists, as it is the physics package rather than the guidance systems or its launch-force resistance that the operative issue.
I could go on and on regarding the myriad ways this book fails to serve an intelligent readership, but suffice it to say that it was primarily written to provide profit, not useful information.
The second book, ‘Masters of Chaos, The Secret History of the Special Forces’ by Linda Robinson (ISBN 1-58648-249-1) is a much different proposition than the travesty critiqued above.
While knowledgeable individuals within the Special Forces community may have some justifiable reservations on certain technical issues or disclosure grounds, within the genre, it remains a highly informative and very enjoyable read.
Written in the third person, this anecdotal compilation presents an eminently successful attempt to walk the reader through the life and times of the post-Vietnam Special Forces through a great many aspects of today’s conflicts.
For those who have enjoyed reading Tom Clancy’s earlier works, this is an opportunity to take a real-world walk on the wild side as seen through the eyes of people who really have been there and done that… but more than that, it allows the perceptive reader to form a paradigm of unconventional warfare and terrorism that dispenses with the usual hyperbole and fantasy so common today. As an added bonus, these new models for understanding our brave new world’s conflicts can bring one to an entirely new plane of appreciation for what is actually going on… as opposed to the strained pabulum we are fed by from the ‘mainstream’ media.
Tom Marzullo
© 2005, Tom Marzullo All rights reserved.
Ellie
January 20, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Tom Marzullo
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For those whose interests in the War on Terror push them towards reading whatever they find… be warned, for every nugget of gold there is garbage by the ton.
So, let’s take an informed walk through two recent offerings.
The first book I will critique purports to pertain to the issue of what we can expect out of the amalgamated terror organizations out there and is written by Dr. Paul L. Williams, titled ‘Osama’s Revenge,’ ISBN 1-59102-252-5.
Simply as a Health Physicist and beyond my reaction to its hyperbole on Islamist functionality through having some practical grounding in guerrilla/terrorist operations, a major bone I have to pick is the book’s coverage of the issues surrounding terrorists and nuclear weapons. The reliably informative portions of the book are only so by the occasional and seemingly random selection of decent materials it draws from… Dr. Theodore Taylor's assessment of the possibilities of nuclear weapons construction amongst them.
I rather strongly agree with Dr. Taylor’s assessment that putting together a working fission bomb is not that hard, especially if the mass/size-to-yield ratio is not a major concern.
For this kind of device and application it would actually be desirable to cause a much higher percentage than normal byproducts of such an incomplete or inefficient fission process consisting of unused fissionable material, fission byproducts and materials made radioactive by neutron activation into the non-activated physical debris kicked up by the blast making these particulates 'hotter' from a radiological standpoint. This melds well into the scenario I postulated in the very first public discussions on the subject of a denial of use result secondary to contamination dispersals desired by the terrorists.
As a participant in public discussions, I have previously mentioned the use of a cargo ship as one of the preferred delivery devices for such a construct due to the size and mass of such a crude device. For instance, if a smaller oil tanker is used, then the thousands of tons of crude oil that is scattered and burned by the blast would also be well contaminated by the inefficient fission process that uses up only a small percentage of the fissionable materials and so the resulting 'plume' would disperse these lighter, more highly contaminated particulates over a much farther area than the vaporized solids typically cast up by the blast that would precipitate out earlier, thereby greatly increasing the area contaminated.
The book’s categorization of "suitcase" or "nuclear demolitions" as the major ‘tactical' nuclear weapons of interest is plainly wrong. There were a great many 'tactical' nuclear weapons in the Soviet inventory, many of which lacked the redundant safeguards of strategic systems and were often poorly controlled by the chain of command. For instance, during the Cuban missile crisis the main major danger of war came not from the warheads on the strategic theater capable missiles that we recall, but rather from the nuclear-tipped short range missiles aboard the Russian small craft provided to the Cubans... and the skippers of each boat had the full ability to fire those weapons without consultation or approvals from higher authority. Tactical nuclear devices also include warheads that could be deployed by artillery, short-range missiles or light aircraft.... all of which fit well into the category of ready-made devices that are highly desirable from the standpoint of the Islamist terrorists, as it is the physics package rather than the guidance systems or its launch-force resistance that the operative issue.
I could go on and on regarding the myriad ways this book fails to serve an intelligent readership, but suffice it to say that it was primarily written to provide profit, not useful information.
The second book, ‘Masters of Chaos, The Secret History of the Special Forces’ by Linda Robinson (ISBN 1-58648-249-1) is a much different proposition than the travesty critiqued above.
While knowledgeable individuals within the Special Forces community may have some justifiable reservations on certain technical issues or disclosure grounds, within the genre, it remains a highly informative and very enjoyable read.
Written in the third person, this anecdotal compilation presents an eminently successful attempt to walk the reader through the life and times of the post-Vietnam Special Forces through a great many aspects of today’s conflicts.
For those who have enjoyed reading Tom Clancy’s earlier works, this is an opportunity to take a real-world walk on the wild side as seen through the eyes of people who really have been there and done that… but more than that, it allows the perceptive reader to form a paradigm of unconventional warfare and terrorism that dispenses with the usual hyperbole and fantasy so common today. As an added bonus, these new models for understanding our brave new world’s conflicts can bring one to an entirely new plane of appreciation for what is actually going on… as opposed to the strained pabulum we are fed by from the ‘mainstream’ media.
Tom Marzullo
© 2005, Tom Marzullo All rights reserved.
Ellie