Spin Dry

Or not. From certain quarters online, I've been hearing mutterings of another terrorist attack in August. These are the people who are utterly convinced that the US and UK governments were behind 9/11 and 7/7. I'm not completely convinced of that proposition, although I have my doubts. But -- both of those events occured during "terror drills" that came pretty damn close to mimicking real events, particularly in London.

So, perhaps, this should give us pause:

FORT MONROE, Va. -- Here’s the scenario…A seafaring vessel transporting a 10-kiloton nuclear warhead makes its way into a port off the coast of Charleston, S.C. Terrorists aboard the ship attempt to smuggle the warhead off the ship to detonate it. Is this really a possibility?

Joint Task Force Civil Support (JTF-CS) here is planning its next exercise on the premise that this crisis is indeed plausible.

Sudden Response 05 will take place this August on Fort Monroe and will be carried out as an internal command post exercise. The exercise is intended to train the JTF-CS staff to plan and execute Consequence Management operations in support of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region IV’s response to a nuclear detonation.

Here's a bit more paranoid take on it.

Of course, remember, tomorrow is August 9, the 60th anniversary of America's nuking of Nagasaki. It's also a Tuesday. Personally, I'd be worried about tomorrow.

Significantly, I can't find an exact date for the Sudden Response exercise. And if you're wondering why something so obvious as terror attacks during terror drills, that's exactly the point. "This is only a drill. If this were a real emergency..."