Has anyone read this book?
… or read anything about these claims that Saudi Arabia [color=black]"has in place a nationwide, self-destruction explosive system composed of conventional explosives and dirty bombs strategically placed at the Kingdom
Other than oil, is Saudi Arabia useful to anyone? Frankly, that last photo might be onto something – looks like you’ve got a picture of four of the giant killer robots from “The Incredibles”.
No wonder Bush didn’t want to invade there.
But seriously, if true this is quite disturbing (for the lack of a better word). Though it could also be a trick, i.e. wrong information leaked intentionally to deter potential attack(er)s.
Haven’t seen the Incredibles yet, MFGR – so I can’t comment on that directly. But I agree that those are some odd looking contraptions. I was thinking they look a little like the big space ships that the bad guys were trying to escape in at the end of the last Star Wars movie…
Rascal: I agree with you fully that it would be somewhat disturbing, if true. I also agree with you that it seems quite plausible to me that the whole thing is a hoax.
it doesn’t seem logical for a number of reasons.
blackmail the west into protecting them from who? reticence on the part of the west to protect them probably does not rank highly on the saudi’s list of worries.
what kind of radiation are we talking about to seriously impede the removal of oil from the ground over the long term? would some of the richest people in the world, known for being high-on-the-hog playboys, have it in them to plot such a fatalistic course? is it even technically possible?
[quote=“Tempo Gain”]it doesn’t seem logical for a number of reasons.
blackmail the west into protecting them from who? reticence on the part of the west to protect them probably does not rank highly on the saudi’s list of worries.
what kind of radiation are we talking about to seriously impede the removal of oil from the ground over the long term? would some of the richest people in the world, known for being high-on-the-hog playboys, have it in them to plot such a fatalistic course? is it even technically possible?[/quote]
I did a quick google on this last night…the saudis are afraid that muslim terrorists will blow up their oil fields with dirty bombs…
how ironic, but don’t forget, the saudis are sort of hated by many of their own…read osama bin plottin.
I couldn’t find anything about the saudis boobytrapping the fields…the book sounds like a scare tactic.
[quote=“Tempo Gain”]it doesn’t seem logical for a number of reasons.
blackmail the west into protecting them from who? reticence on the part of the west to protect them probably does not rank highly on the saudi’s list of worries.
what kind of radiation are we talking about to seriously impede the removal of oil from the ground over the long term? would some of the richest people in the world, known for being high-on-the-hog playboys, have it in them to plot such a fatalistic course? is it even technically possible?[/quote]
Many good questions. In terms of who they think they need protection from, I think jdsmith has suggested the their biggest fear: their own people. I suspect that invasion from an outside power is not nearly as scary to them as the possibility of being knocked off by an internal revolt.
correct, and under most imaginable scenarios even scarier to the west!
[quote=“Hobbes”]Has anyone read this book?
[/quote]
I doubt anyone’s read it, as it’s not scheduled to come out until next week. It did get some good reviews though.
As for the author, he’s sure written on a wide range of subjects: Motown, James Earl Ray, Joseph Mengele, children of Nazis, Chinese gangsters, Ross Perot, etc., so apparently he’s not a Saudi expert; he’s a prolific author who writes about subjects that he finds interesting.
I was kinda hoping that the “dirty” bombs were somehow going to be sexier.
Someone actually posted a couple pictures of dirty bombs on this thread late last night. But I was forced to delete the post in question pursuant to Forumosa Rules regarding indecent images.
Has anyone seen the Maxwell Smart movie?
[quote=“Hobbes”]Has anyone read this book?
[/quote]
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]I doubt anyone’s read it, as it’s not scheduled to come out until next week. It did get some good reviews though.
As for the author, he’s sure written on a wide range of subjects: Motown, James Earl Ray, Joseph Mengele, children of Nazis, Chinese gangsters, Ross Perot, etc., so apparently he’s not a Saudi expert; he’s a prolific author who writes about subjects that he finds interesting.
amazon.com/exec/obidos/searc … 15-9540905[/quote]
Here’s likely a better Posner to read on the subject of terror as politics (Richard, a judge in Chicago’s U.S. Appeals Court and a non-economist lecturer in both law and economics at U of C). IMO, a very fine thinker and easily the American Right’s most coherent intellectual:
