Claudia Rosett wrote “The Next Failure of Imagination: Nuclear Terrorism?” a few days ago, raising the specter of a WMD terrorist attack. She posits:
“But is there yet another failure of imagination in the making, on a scale that could dwarf the horrors that have become ritually familiar in the headlines? Is the clock ticking toward some unimaginable midnight of terrorism gone nuclear?
Not that no one has imagined this. Thriller writers from Tom Clancy to Vince Flynn have imagined it in detail, Hollywood has made movies about it, policy experts have held conferences and written papers, government committees have delved into it, and there are government security procedures and agents trying to monitor and thwart any such catastrophe.
But do the folks in the cockpits of western policy take this threat seriously? No such attack has happened to date. In the habitual human calculus that tends to amount to an expectation that somehow it won’t; that however real the danger, the chances of it happening are still a matter of improbable odds. It still belongs to the realm of fiction.
Map the dots, however, and ask yourself if the probabilities are rising.”
JK mentioned this link from 2014: ““Dirty Bombs:” Reason to Worry?
Here are some more recent “dots” to map:
“Pentagon officials believe ISIS used chemical weapons against Kurds in Iraq”
“Chemical weapons used in Syrian fighting – watchdog”
“Islamic State Suspected of Using Chemical Weapon, U.S. Says”
Then we get to 2 days ago:
