WMD threat

Special Operations Command takes a lead role in countering weapons of mass destruction

U.S. Special Operations Command will take a new, leading role coordinating the Pentagon’s effort to counter weapons of mass destruction, reinvigorating a long-running debate about how the U.S. military should handle threats posed by everything from nuclear weapons to chemical agents such as mustard and sarin.

The decision was approved by President Obama at Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter’s request in August but is still taking shape in the Pentagon and could be finalized in January, defense officials said. Numerous aspects of the mission to counter weapons of mass destruction will shift to Special Operations Command (SOCOM) from U.S. Strategic Command, which then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld assigned to the mission in 2005.

WMD threat

Isil 'plotting biological and nuclear attacks on Europe'

There is a "justified concern" that Islamist fanatics in Syria and Iraq are trying to obtain substances of mass destruction such as biological, chemical and radiological weapons.

The terror group is also trying to develop new ways of avoiding security measures to carry out attacks such as bombs implanted in human bodies and hacking driverless cars, an international security conference in London was told.

Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) is also feared to have obtained a stockpile of former Iraqi short-range missiles such as surface-to-air rockets.

Jorge Berto Silva, deputy head of counter-terrorism for the EC, said Isil had shown an interest in obtaining chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear (CBRN) materials.

It emerged after the Brussels terror attacks last month that the terror cell had been secretly filming a senior Belgian nuclear official outside his home, fuelling fears they were looking at ways of obtaining such substances.

WMD threat

George W. Bush's CIA Briefer: Bush and Cheney Falsely Presented WMD Intelligence to Public

For a dozen years, the Bush-Cheney crowd have been trying to escape—or cover up—an essential fact of the W. years: President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their lieutenants misled the American public about the WMD threat supposedly posed by Saddam Hussein in order to grease the way to the invasion of Iraq. For Bush, Cheney, and the rest, this endeavor is fundamental; it is necessary to protect the legitimacy of the Bush II presidency.