Al-Qaeda's vision of a America after nuclear attack

The computer-generated image below was posted on an Islamic extremists' website yesterday.
Washington is laid to waste. The Capitol is a blackened, smoking ruin. The White House has been razed. Countless thousands are dead.

This is the apocalyptic scene terrorists hope to create if they ever get their hands on a nuclear bomb. [snip]

Al Sahab puts out more than 80 'officially sanctioned' videos a year to keep up the propaganda on the West. And the Internet shows how easy it is to stir up militancy. One message with the Washington picture said: 'The next strike's in the heart of America. When? When? When? And How?'

Last night FBI sources said Al Qaeda was desperate to get its hands on a weapon of mass destruction, be it nuclear, chemical, or biological. So far that is only a dream... or, as this picture suggests, a nightmare.

[Scare mongering? : the consequence of a WMD attack on this nation are hard to overestimate, and we've every right to aggressively defend ourselves against such monstrous threats. Our best chance of preventing such an attack is a) using every intelligence means possible to monitor and interdict them, and b) staying on offense and denying them a stable base of operations from which to organize and project themselves - such as we'd be handing them if we abandoned Iraq]

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