Use of WMD's Specifically Chemical Weapons By Terrorists Inside The United States May Be Imminent

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are in the hands of terrorists and have been used for some time in attempts to cause wide spread destruction and instill fear.

May 16,2004 marks an ominous day in the war on terror. For that is the day that terrorists first used a chemical weapon in battle, and used by a non state or in other words not by a direct Government.

Though this incident only caused a "slight exposure" to two Unites States, explosives ordinance disposal technicians, it was designed to kill thousands. Had this weapon gone off as intended it would have spread a fatal cloud of GB (Sarin) over a dozen city blocks and would have caused the death of Iraqi civilians, and 3,000 coalition troops stationed nearby at camp Victory. The 155mm shell contained one gallon of the agent, though it was not known at the time.

Since May 16 2004 there have been at least six other attacks against coalition forces in which some chemical agent was involved. All were WMD's of Saddam Hussein's pre-Gulf War arsenal.

In 2005 U.S. troops conducted a raid on a warehouse in the city of Mosul. During the raid they discovered a weapons factory that held 1500 gallons of chemical agents and precursors to create more weapons.

On February 23, 2008 truck bombs containing chlorine gas were detonated inside Baghdad. The poison gas and blast effects killed more than a hundred people.

Al-Qaeda is determined to use these agents against the United States and many security experts and myself feel that such an attack is inevitable.

The terrorists have been experimenting and using various chemical weapons in attacks and are honing their skills and studying the effects of these attacks as well.

Off-line Source: Pfarrer, C. (2008) Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction In The Hands Of Terrorists. The Counter Terrorist, 1(4) 16 Nov. 2008

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President Elect Obama Warned to "Brace Himself" For An Attack

President Elect Obama has been warned by leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to "brace himself for an early assault by terrorists."

General Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, this week acknowledged that there were dangers during a presidential transition when new officials were coming in and getting accustomed to the challenges. But he added that no “real or artificial spike” in intercepted transmissions from terror suspects had been detected.

Britain and the US are sharing all intelligence on suspected terrorist activity because of the high risk of a plot involving transatlantic flights. Al-Qaeda is understood still to be obsessed with mounting an attack using passenger airliners. There have also been warnings of al-Qaeda interest in developing a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) device. The US has anti-CBRN units on constant patrol in main cities.

Al-Qaeda is known to be experimenting with biological agents, particularly anthrax, which they acquire from dead animals and then create cultures. The key man involved in these experiments is Abou Kabbah al-Masri, who was engaged in the biological trials including tests on rabbits that were uncovered in Afghanistan when the Taleban were overrun after the US invasion in 2001.

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United States Computer Systems Under Attack, IT Security Lacking

White House emails and networks infiltrated, President elect Obama, and Senator McCain's computers attacked and infiltrated during the summer at least once.

The Chinese have been accused and caught spying on the United States since the early Clinton administration, though nothing has really been done about it.

Little action has been taken to secure the systems, guard information from them, and they are still vulnerable.

The scary part, is apparently the ease with which they were allegedly able to penetrate the systems and this should be a warning to any future candidates running for the office of the President of the United States, and any other people in the Government.

It was recently announced that the World Bank was hacked apparently numerous times as well.

Too many Companies, and Government systems holding sensitive data are unnecessarily vulnerable to outside attack. Placing this data on vulnerable and accessible networks is like leaving the door to the candy store wide open.

Recently, Michael Horowitz had a post on his Defensive Computing blog titled "Some Computers Are Too Important To Be Networked". I highly suggest you read it, and apply its lessons to your computer security plans. It is a short post and well worth reading.

An earlier post I had on this can be found here: Obama and McCain Computers Hacked Over The Summer.

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Obama and McCain Computers Hacked Over The Summer

Both Presidential candidates had their computer systems hacked over the summer by what authorities are saying is an "unknown foreign entity."

Reports of the attack were published yesterday, and authorities who investigated the incident believe whoever it was, was looking for foreign policy information and how the candidates my react in future negotiations.

Originally tech's from the Obama camp believed they had a virus and the next day they were informed that the problem was far more serious according to the report.

"You have a problem way bigger than what you understand," an agent told Obama's team."You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system."

Federal agents told Obama's aides that the McCain campaign had suffered a similar attack, which a top McCain official later confirmed.

The Feds assured the Obama team that it had not been hacked by its political opponents. (Obama technical experts later speculated that the hackers were Russian or Chinese.) A security firm retained by the Obama campaign took steps to secure its computer system and end the intrusion. White House and FBI officials had no comment earlier this week.

More about the specifics of the attack can be found on Xssed.

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United States Expects New Bin Laden Video Prior To Election

According to an ABC exclusive report several top U.S. Officials are expecting the release of a new video from Bin Laden just prior to the election. Though they also say there is no current hard evidence of such a message as yet, they are expecting one.

The report also cautioned against such speculation, suggesting that bin Laden is most concerned about his own safety at the moment, and might increasingly fear for his life.

We shall see in the next few days if it happens.

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