Expert Predicts 'High Probability' Attacks

Since 05-06-07

Jim Meyers, NewsMax.com

May 1, 2007

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/4/30/202053.shtml?s=al&promo_code=333C-1

An expert who helped prepare a 1994 report that uncannily predicted the threat terrorists would pose – including key aspects of the 9/11 attacks – now warns of even more ominous attacks.

"Muslim extremists will acquire nuclear weapons within the next 10 years, if they do not possess them already," writes Forecasting International founder and president Marvin Cetron in the new issue of The Futurist magazine.

Cetron played a key role in the 1994 report titled "Terror 2000: the Future Face of Terrorism."

The report was part of a Pentagon sponsored conference that took input from several experts, including Paul Bremer, formerly ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism and administrator of Iraq; Brian Jenkins, now senior vice president at the RAND Corp.; and others.

At the time, the common wisdom was that terrorism was becoming obsolete, for no state would be likely to sponsor future terrorist acts for fear of crippling reprisals.

The authors of the "Terror 2000" report saw it differently, Terrorism, they predicted, would be sponsored not by states but by Muslim extremists motivated by hatred of the West.

Among the particulars, the compilers of the report foresaw a new, more successful attack on the World Trade Center towers, the crash of an airplane into the Pentagon, and the threat of simultaneous assaults on widely separated targets.

The accuracy of that report lends considerable credence to Cetron and his organization, and their new predictions.

"Rather than obtaining nuclear weapons from a sympathetic government, al-Qaida or its spin-offs will likely become the government in any of perhaps a dozen countries," Cetron writes.

"Wherever secular government is weak, it might easily be replaced by a much stronger and more virulently anti-American theocracy with leaders drawn straight from the terrorist movement."

He cites Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and the predominantly Muslim nations of the former Soviet Union.

"However," Cetron notes, "our own choice for ‘most likely to undergo a religious revolution' is Saudi Arabia, where the royal family has supported the extremist Wahhabi sect for some 200 years."

Interestingly, Cetron's report was published before Saudi officials arrested last week 172 militants it claimed were planning massive and coordinated terror attacks at installations, including numerous refineries, across the kingdom.

Recently, Forecasting International surveyed a variety of military specialists, futurists and others to highlight the most probable and devastating threats facing the U.S. and the West in the future. Among the most worrisome:

·  Coordinated suicide bombings in Washington, D.C.

·  Attacks on commuter trains in New York or other major cities.

·  Destruction of the train and vehicle tunnels in and out of New York City.

·  Detonation of a suitcase nuclear device.

·  An attack at the next U.S. presidential inauguration.

·  Shooting down Air Force One.

·  A repeat of the 9/11 scenario, with airliners crashing into major buildings.

The transformation of terrorist groups into legitimate political factions or even governments – which Forecasting International sees likely within the next five years – will be rooted in Muslims' widespread hostility toward the West.

To make his case, Cetron cites figures that Forecasting International helped compile, indicating that one-third of Muslims believe the 9/11 attacks were justified and two-thirds believe the attacks were carried out by the intelligence agencies of the U.S., Britain or Israel to discredit Muslims.

In short, two-thirds of the world's 1.7 billion Muslims – in every Muslim country and at every socioeconomic level – "take it as a matter of faith that the U.S. ‘war on terror' is no more than a fraud carried out for the purpose of returning them to colonial rule," according to Cetron, who has served as a consultant for Fortune 500 companies, foreign governments and branches of the U.S. government.

And the terrorist ranks are growing in the Muslim world, in both Muslim nations and among Europe's burgeoning Muslim population, encouraged to an extent by the American invasion of Iraq.

Up to 30,000 foreign fighters are thought to have entered Iraq, where they are "now gaining contacts and experience that will serve them well in future campaigns against Western nations," Cetron predicts.

"In this, Iraq is now serving the function that Afghanistan provided in the 1980s."

Countering these terrorist threats will be difficult, Cetron concedes. For one thing, nuclear weapons are becoming increasingly portable and therefore hard to stop at the border.

Furthermore, a preemptive strike against terrorists and their sympathizers "could involve so many deaths, and such a horrific level of guilt, that the United States would be unlikely to survive intact," Cetron concludes.

He urges that nuclear materials abandoned around the world must be secured, and Saudi Arabia must be discouraged from supporting madrassas that spew a virulent anti-West message.

Another voice sounding the alarm about the looming threat from Muslim extremists is investigative reporter Paul Williams, author of the new book "The Day of Islam: The Annihilation of America and the Western World."

Williams, a former consultant for the FBI, provides readers with newly uncovered information on terrorist activities in Pakistan, Iran, Iran, other Muslim countries – and our neighbor Canada – which points to a coming nuclear attack on American soil. [Editor's Note: For more info on "Day of Islam" -- Click Here]

What emerges is a harrowing picture of international terrorist activities, all aimed at the destruction of the United States and the collapse of the Western world.