<HTML>FROM G2 BULLETIN & WorldNetDaily.com
New Congress warning on nuclear EMP threat
U.S. vulnerable to attack by terrorists that could cripple nation, kill millions
June 20, 2005
In diesem Artikel wird von US-Senatoren und Kongressmitgliedern erneut vehement vor den Auswirkungen eines Angriffs auf die USA mit elektromagnetischen Pulsen gewarnt, wobei der enorme nukleare Impuls im Mittelpunkt steht, gleichzeitig wird aber auch vor anderen Geräten und Waffen gewarnt, die starke elektromagnetische Pulse aussenden können.
Bemerkenswert ist die Einschätzung der Fachleute, dass 99% der Amerikaner nicht viel über EMP wissen, aber 100% der Feinde Amerikas alles über EMP wissen.
"Ninety-nine percent of Americans may not know very much about EMP, but I will assure you ... that 100 percent of our potential enemies know all about EMP."
Auszüge:
WASHINGTON – Joining Sen. John Kyl, who earlier warned of how an electromagnetic pulse attack threatens U.S. survival, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, chairman of the House Projection Forces Subcommittee, says an EMP attack – even by an underfunded, unsophisticated terrorist group – has the potential to cripple U.S. society and kill millions.
"Today we are very much concerned ... about asymmetric weapons," Bartlett told his colleagues. "We are a big, powerful country. Nobody can contend with us shoulder-to-shoulder, face-to-face. So all of our potential adversaries are looking for what we refer to as asymmetric weapons. That is a weapon that overcomes our superior capabilities. There is no asymmetric weapon that has anywhere near the potential of EMP."
EMP attacks are generated when a nuclear weapon is detonated at altitudes above a few dozen kilometers above the Earth's surface... "These electromagnetic pulses propagate from the burst point of the nuclear weapon to the line of sight on the Earth's horizon, potentially covering a vast geographic region in doing so simultaneously, moreover, at the speed of light," said Dr. Lowell Wood, acting chairman of the commission appointed by Congress to study the threat...
The commission, in its work over a period of several years, found that EMP is one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold American society seriously at risk and that might also result in the defeat of U.S. military forces.
"The electromagnetic field pulses produced by weapons designed and deployed with the intent to produce EMP have a high likelihood of damaging electrical power systems, electronics and information systems upon which any reasonably advanced society, most specifically including our own, depend vitally," Wood said. "Their effects on systems and infrastructures dependent on electricity and electronics could be sufficiently ruinous as to qualify as catastrophic to the American nation."
Bartlett added: "Potential adversaries are aware of the EMP's strategic attack option. Ninety-nine percent of Americans may not know very much about EMP, but I will assure you ... that 100 percent of our potential enemies know all about EMP. I think that the American people need to know about EMP because they need to demand that their government do the prudent thing so that we will be less and less susceptible, less and less at risk to an EMP attack year by year. The threat is not adequately addressed in U.S. national and homeland security programs. Not only is it not adequately addressed; it is usually ignored, not even mentioned, and it certainly needs to be considered."
The congressman also raised the question of retaliation – and how an EMP sneak attack could not only go undetected, but that it might be impossible to find out who was responsible after the fact...
Yet, over time, an EMP attack would likely result in much more death than a nuclear attack on a major city, he said.
An EMP attack is far more dangerous to the West than it is to other less technologically developed countries, he said.
EMP, he warned, can cause catastrophic damage to the nation by destroying the electric power infrastructure, causing cascading failures in the infrastructure for everything: telecommunications, energy, transportation, finance, food, and water.
Bartlett is urging a major national commitment to preparing for such an attack, which, he said, would not be nearly as costly as might be expected.
"Every new water system we put in, every new sewage system we put in, every new power line we run, every new distribution system we put in needs to be hardened," he explained. "It is not all that expensive to do. You just need to do it."</HTML>
