A Nuclear Al Qaeda?

David Ignatius writes a column on RealClearPolitics.com today that should disturb you. It's about Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, the Energy Department's director of intelligence, who has been investigating Al Qaeda's nuclear ambitions since shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Excerpt:

Mowatt-Larssen argues that for nearly a decade before 9/11, al-Qaeda was seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. As early as 1993, Osama bin Laden offered $1.5 million to buy uranium for a nuclear device, according to testimony presented in federal court in February 2001. When the al-Qaeda leader was asked in 1998 if he had nuclear or chemical weapons, he responded: "Acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so."

Even as al-Qaeda was preparing to fly its airplane bombs into buildings, the group was also trying to acquire nuclear and biological capability. In August 2001, bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, met around a campfire with Pakistani scientists from a group called Umma Tameer-E-Nau to discuss how al-Qaeda could build a nuclear device. Al-Qaeda also had an aggressive anthrax program that was discovered in December 2001 after bin Laden was driven from his safe haven in Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda proclaimed a religious rationale to justify the WMD attacks it was planning. In June 2002, a Kuwaiti-born cleric named Suleiman Abu Ghaith posted a statement on the Internet that "al-Qaeda has the right to kill four million Americans" in retaliation for U.S. attacks against Muslims. And in May 2003, at the same time Saudi operatives of al-Qaeda were trying to buy three Russian nuclear bombs, a cleric named Nasir al-Fahd issued a fatwa titled, "A Treatise on the Legal Status of Using Weapons of Mass Destruction Against Infidels." Interrogations of al-Qaeda operatives confirmed that the planning was serious. Al-Qaeda didn't yet have the materials for a WMD attack, but it wanted them.

Most chilling of all was Zawahiri's decision in March 2003 to cancel a cyanide attack in the New York subway system. He told the plotters to stand down because "we have something better in mind." What did that mean? More than four years later, we still don't know.

Rick Moran adds this from a follow up article at American Thinker:

And three Saudi al-Qaeda operatives were thwarted from buying 3 Russian made nukes in 2003. They have enlisted the help of Pakistani scientists - some of whom worked on the Paikstani bomb program.

And just as importantly, Mowatt-Larssen has pointed out that al-Qaeda has received the blessing of several Muslim clerics to go ahead and use any nuclear weapon they might acquire.

Are we going to wait until a mushroom cloud blossoms over an American city before we do something about Al Qaeda's nuclear ambitions? You can say what you want about him, but at least President Bush is serious about taking the fight to our enemies. I just hope the next President will be as courageous and resolute.

There's my two cents.