The news here in Memphis, TN (right now) is speculating on the bridge crossing the Mississippi at Memphis as a terrorist target.
Is this a viable and high priority target and if not - what is?
Yes. Everything. Including your house. To paraphrase Michael Corleone, “Where your wife sleeps. Where your children play with their toys.”
Check my location. Think oil.
Current “official” thinking is that terrorists would strike first at high-profile, symbolic targets. That means in St. Louis, for example, the Arch would be a more likely target than the heavily traveled interstate highway bridge over the Mississippi River just a few hundred yards away. In Seattle, the Space Needle would be more vulnerable, than, say Microsoft headquarters or the Boeing complex.
Of course, the jackpot might be a functional symbol, such as the Golden Gate Bridge.
But anopther way of looking at this is to go back to Cold War planning and looking at what were believed to be key oviet targets – military facilities, population centers, transportation chokepoints, dams (especially hydroelectric dams) and nuclear facilities. Right up the river from Memphis, Paducah had so many of those clustered together, it was believed to be a top 10 target, even though the city itself barely had 30,000 people.
Who knows what the terrorists consider high priority targets? Before the first WTC bombing, I wouldn’t have put the buildings in my top 10 list of symbolic places to bomb in the US. It wouldn’t have even been in my top five for New York. And remember right before the turn of the millenium, when they caught that guy crossing the border with the intention of blowing stuff up is Seattle. How many people can find Oklahoma on a map, much less Oklahoma City?
Nashville being much more a part of the American heartland than a major world city, I’d expect any terrorism there to be domestic in nature. Or foreign terrorists might focus on small cities just like Nashville to circumvent the high levels of security in New York, Washington D.C., etc.
The person crossing the border in Washington State was arrested for plotting to explode a device at Los Angeles International Airport, not anything in Seattle it was believed.
However, since the city of Seattle cancelled its Millenium celebrations, most draw that connection.
I’d be thinking along the lines of an 18 wheeler loaded up with explosives and detonated in a city centre.
This is a practice known to be used by mid-east groups, and the IRA in UK cities.
It can be devastating, think Oklahoma, or the US embassy in Beirut.(and these were much smaller vehicles, around 7.5 tonners IIRC)
The loss of life would cause plenty of political damage, it would not matter too much about the target having symbolic or strategic value.
Strategic value is only useful if it provides an exploitable advantage, such as taking out a communications centre, as such I doubt that there can be many strategic targets that mid-east terrorists could use in that sense.
Manhatten Island must be considered a prime target, anywhere that might cause difficulty to world financial markets, other than that, pretty much any major city could be a target.
Such an attack on the I-40 Hernando de Soto bridge or the I-55 bridge in Memphis would be devestating and almost totally unstoppable.
It would be tragic, but not completely devastating.
They would (1) have to take out BOTH bridges, otherwise just hop down Riverside or one of the other North-South streets and pick up the other bridge. Plus they would also now have to take out the new I-155 bridge up in Dyersburg - If that wasn’t taken out as well, it’s only a couple hours’ (or less) trip up Hwy 51, traffic could still get to Memphis. Wouldn’t be pleasant or as quick, but it would still be doable.
HOWEVER, this only applies to road traffic. If the I-55 Bridge (AKA the Memphis-Arkansas or the “Old Bridge”) were taken out, one would assume the railroad bridge next to it would also be taken out. This presents a greater problem. AFAIK, the only other rail crossings are St. Louis to the north, and Vicksburg to the south (and I’m not sure if there is a rail crossing at Vicksburg, either).
critter42
I think you are all approaching this from a 1st world military perspective. Terrorists, as implied by the name, generally do not act tactically with an end objective, apart from the political statement created by instilling fear in the target’s citizens.
Terrorist attacks are less likely to be things like bridges, communications centers, or even population centers, as they are seemingly random, unrelated events and locations that would not be subject to increased security in light of a percieved terrorist threat.
The real weapon that terrorists posess is our inability to address the problem with traditional military strategy - the rules just don’t apply when you are fighting an enemy with no headquarters, assets, fear of death, or strategic objective on their part.
They aren’t trying to capture a hill, and they have no centralized structure that can be toppled.
There is no endgame.
No endgame? If you had a minimum of resources and wanted to inflict a maximum of damage to a colossal enemy what would you do? Here’s one horrible scenario.
Bush wipes his ass with Iraq, the war is over in three days, mop up takes two weeks. Al Queda has been expunged from Afghanistan but most of its leadership is still on the loose. Six months go by and “chatter” is low and it seems the worst elements of Islamic terrorism has been permanently wiped out, never to threaten America again. Meanwhile, young men who lost their fathers, and fathers who lost their sons, sit in basements in Pakistan, Indonesia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Sudan, and a host of other countries and plot revenge, plot to topple the mighty US. They are fragmented, disorganized, blindly lashing out without cohesion or real effectiveness. A disco bombing at a South Pacific resort, a suicide attack on a Tel Aviv bus, nothing new or different for these career killers.
Suddenly, a charismatic figure reemerges onto the world terror scene. Some say its bin Laden, others think it’s just someone exploiting his reputation, but regardless everyone takes notice. A plan spreads out through guarded channels on the internet and paper mail. Anti-terror picks up a scattering of information here and there, but nothing substantial, because no one knows the whole plan, everyone just knows their part to play. Go to X, acquire Y, and when Z happens you’ll know what to do.
Six months and day after Gulf War II Bush is giving a speech, congratulating himself and the American people for their valor and strong moral code. Never mind the economy he mutters as he concludes with, “We are winning the War on Terror.” As the applaud rises TV screens flash off the president’s humble visage and bring up a new headline.
Three dirty nukes have simultaneously detonated in DC, NYC, and LA. The real estate in those towns is going to be dirt-cheap for at least the next 100 years. Then sleeper cells wake up across the country and start sniping at random civilians, and suicide bombers strapped with c4 and nails explode themselves in malls, on buses, and in schools. All commercial airliners are grounded but several still in the air are taken control of by terrorists and a few manage to hit targets before being intercepted. Within an hour several million Americans are dead or dying.
Before the markets are closed, investors drop everything and try and pull together some liquid capital for the long haul. The terrorists have shorted everything in advance and if and when the markets go back online they will make a tidy fortune. Martial law is invoked, curfews enforced, tanks patrol the streets and black hawks and F-16s watch the skies, but somehow in the next weeks major reservoirs are poisoned, and hijacked crop dusters drop anthrax over major metropolitan areas before they are shot down, all mail service is suspended. All major hospitals have a contingent of marines forming a perimeter but here and there a terrorist with a cache of botulism in a balloon in his rectum slips through. Emergency infirmaries face similar threats. Power facilitates are targeted next. American embassies are overrun all over Africa and Asia.
Europe sends what help they can but they have to worry about their own asses, and are on highest alert. Mass panic grips the nation; but the police and military are shooting at a swarm of hornets with an m16, and emergency response services are going into shock. Legions of terrorists are captured or killed, but the tide keeps on coming. It’s like they have no reason to live except to kill us. It’s all-out, nothing left to lose guerrilla war of a magnitude and viciousness never seen before in the history of combat.
That’s an endgame for the terrorists. Could they or would they is anyone’s guess, but its not beyond the realm of possibility. Bush thinks ample force will defeat and demoralize terrorists world-over, permanently. Somehow I just don’t see them taking it lying down.
Thank you SO much for that!
Is Bruce Willis a member of this forum?..Bruce??
Ambasciator non porta pena
Don’t shoot the messenger
I had a thought for a set of targets with massive potential for economic disruption, though the casualty figure would be low.
Bluewater Bridge, Port Huron MI - Sarnia ON
Ambassador Bridge, Detroit MI - Windsor ON
Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, Detroit MI - Windsor ON
Peace Bridge, Buffalo NY - Ft Erie ON
Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls NY - Niagara Falls ON
Lewiston-Queenston Bridge, Lewiston NY - Queenston ON
And, if you want to be thorough, the Mackinac and Sault Ste Marie bridges too. Unlike bridges in other places, you can’t just go upstream or downstream a bit if these are out, what with the bigass lakes in the way. Customs inspections don’t enter into it, since all customs inspections are passed through after crossing the bridges. I’d think a good-sized truck bomb would make any of them impassible. Blowing them simultaneously would strangle massive amounts of trade. Billions and billions of dollars would be lost. And all for the cost of some nitrogen fertilizer.
Honestly, should this stuff be posted? I mean, I’m sure the terrorists don’t get their ideas from SDMB but you never know where your thoughts may lead. And thanks for analyzing Memphis targets for the terrorists - that’s nice to read when you live a block from the bridge.
bin Laden’s MO is major operations that spend years in the planning. When John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban, was interrogated he said 9.11 was the first of three increasingly devastating attacks. Whatever the Islamic fundies have cooked up for us, you can bet its been in the works for some time now.
But I agree, no need to mention very specific vulnerabilities on a public board. My own post was a bad Bruckheimer script painted in broad strokes. A worst case, end of the world, scenario.
MVS, I’d be curious to hear what your definition of “priority” is.
In actual practice, I think that targets are chosen more by opportunity than by impact. Isn’t there talk that the plane which hit the Pentagon was supposed to take out the White House? But maybe the terrorist “pilot” couldn’t find it, or maybe they learned at the last minute that Bush was elsewhere, or maybe the Pentagon was just a little closer.
I don’t think that the few people posting on this thread are going to be giving terrorists any new ideas. An individual can think of a lot of different avenues and come up with a rough plan in just an hour (this thread, in point). Imagine if you had spent the last 20+ years with your like minded friends thinking up ways to do major damage. Chances are, anything posted here has already been thought about. Personally though, if I were a terrorist (which I am not), my A-1 priority target would be the Capitol Building during the State of the Union address. Every major political figure in one building and brodcast live into millions of homes. Scary.
Crikey cainxinth, you have a vivid imagination!! The ‘war over in three days’ - come on now. 
I don’t think threads like this are of any particular aid to potential terrorists either. My suggested targets, for example, are arrived at by the simplest of reasoning processes - if you’re going to attack transportation infrastructure, bridges are the obvious choice, and the best bridges to hit are those with heavy traffic where alternate routes don’t exist. Very quickly the bridges over the Detroit and Niagara rivers are the obvious choices.
That said, I doubt they’d be hit. Such an attack would lack emotional impact. It woudln’t terrorize. It’s a target Soviet saboteurs would have chosen, not a target bin Laden would choose.