Form: Quote Commentary

(FB 1546630188 Timestamp) MORE ON THE VULNERABILITY OF WESTERN NATIONS (Rule of Threes…three weeks without power, three months without order…) —“an Iranian military journal has floated around the idea of launching an EMP attack as the key to defeating the U.S. In an article titled “Electronics to Determine Fate of Future Wars,” the journal explains how an EMP attack on America’s electronic infrastructure would bring the country to its knees. “Once you confuse the enemy communication network, you can also disrupt the work of the enemy command- and decision-making center,” the article states. “Even worse today when you disable a country’s military high command through disruption of communications, you will, in effect, disrupt all the affairs of that country. If the world’s industrial countries fail to devise effective ways to defend themselves against dangerous electronic assaults, then they will disintegrate within a few years. American soldiers would not be able to find food to eat nor would they be able to fire a single shot.” Reporting to Congress, the EMP Commission concluded that little in the private sector is hardened to withstand an EMP attack, and even the U.S. military itself has only limited protection. In 2005, Former CIA chief James Woolsey affirmed these facts and urged the country to take steps necessary to protect against the potentially devastating consequences. In testimony before the House International Terrorism and Non-Proliferation Subcommittee, Woolsey referred to the nuclear EMP threat as “a SCUD in a bucket” whereby: “…a simple ballistic missile from a stockpile somewhere in the world outfitted on something like a tramp steamer and fired from some distance offshore into an American city or to a high altitude, thereby creating an electromagnetic pulse effect, which could well be one of the most damaging ways of using a nuclear weapon.” “…We do not have the luxury of assuming that Iran, if it develops fissionable materials, for example, would not share it under some circumstances with al-Qaida operatives. We don’t have the luxury of believing that just because North Korea is a communist state, it would not work under some circumstances to sell its fissionable material to Hezbollah or al-Qaida.”—