Boston Dirty bomb?

ABC News is reporting that the FBI has teams of technicians scouring Boston this Wednesday afternoon after recieving good intel about a plot to detonate a dirty bomb during the inauguration ceremonies....

maybe its disguised as tea?

Maybe this would be a good weekend to head for the cabin, mum!

He he! I'd say it was disguised as burbon or scotch...but they already checked and cleared Ted Kennedy's house....

Ok, if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times... America is naive.

I'm a military brat. My father was in the military. I spent a significant amount of time living with my family overseas when I was a kid. (Half of it was spent in a base who's sole purpose was to guard our European nuclear arsenal, which might explain a few things about me.)

When I was overseas, especially during the time I spent licking fissionables, there was something known as the "Cold War" going on. Now, this was the tail end of the Cold War really... hell, I even got to go chop chunks out of the Berlin Wall when it came down. I was among the first "Free Westerners" through the Brandenburg Gate (though it was mostly due to ignorant bluffing on the part of the group we were in... we didn't realize that the gate wasn't SUPPOSED to be open yet, and we could have easily all be shot or arrested at the time for entering East Berlin that way). In addition, a lovely little skirmish known as "Desert Storm" occured.

Now, during all this time we pretty much had a standing order to be aware of our surroundings at all times so as to protect ourselves and others from possible attacks by foriegn powers and such.

Know what my entire families' response was to these warnings? Lemme paraphrase:

"Ptht. I'm a ton safer here in this little podunk German town sitting near a stockpile of nukes than I would be in America."

And you know what? It was true. First of all, America is a much bigger target. You're guaranteed to kill Americans if you bomb America. If you attack some little German town where Americans happen to be, non-Americans are bound to get hurt in the crossfire.

Certainly, the possibility of hostile actions occuring there in the town existed. We weren't STUPID. But we weren't paranoid either. We knew that if someone really wanted to hurt Americans, we certainly weren't number one on their list. (Maybe the top fifty, sure, but not number one.)

And you know what? Everything I grew up believing about all of that became proven fact the day 9-11 occured. I saw the towers burning, watched for MAYBE a minute, and said "Oh. So it finally happened," and went on with my life. Callous? Maybe. But I had grown up my entire life expecting America to be attacked like that. It didn't shock me. It didn't surprise me. I'd been preparing for something like that my entire life, and once it happened, it wasn't that surprising.

I honestly don't know if America has learned from 9-11 yet. The only way I'm going to find out if it has is when (not if, WHEN) the next attack occurs, will America be surprised again, or will they react in a way that says they expected it.

The possibility of a dirty bomb in Boston? Doesn't surprise me. If one goes off? That won't surprise me either. I just hope it doesn't surprise America either.

The News (which now I call Teh Opinion) stations this morning stated that the FBI is searching for 4 Chinese nationals regarding the suspected dirty bomb plot.

Question:

If a bomb does go off, and we find out that these people did it, would the U.S. be short-sighted enough to go to war with China (i.e. 2 country Nuclear Apocalypse)?

Why aren't they looking for the 2 Iraqi nationals supposedly smuggled in at the same time?