These guys are good! SEAL the apartments, use a TIMER...

Great Debates
1

Instead, Mr. Mohammed suggested an alternate plan for Mr. Padilla in March 2002. He and an accomplice were to enter the United States from Mexico or Puerto Rico, identify three high-rise apartment buildings that used natural gas, rent two apartments in each building, seal all the openings, turn on the gas and set timers to detonate the buildings simultaneouslhttp://clk.atdmt.com/go/nwyrknex03000026nyc/direct;ai.2712631;ct.1/01

Holy shit!

No one will accuse me of a failure of imagination…

Yet, I swear before Jesus I never thought of the sealed apartment thing, as a major “force multiplier.”

Now, granted (this will suprise some Dopers…)
I don’t really sit around pondering the question of improvised pyrotechnics.

Without the benefit of attending the John Ashcroft Distance Learning Extension Academy of Terror Techniques, (just read the article and collect your diploma…)
I might have never thought of this.

Three questions, not necessarily related:

  1. Was it smart to elaborate in such fiendish detail? Wouldn’t a simple “blow up apartment buildings” do for the PR effort?

  2. Was the news release, in fact, a PR effort, an attemnpt to “work the refs”, namely the supremes who weigh in momentarily?

  3. Do you believe the “Al-quaeda application form?” What, you need two recommendations, and you get sweaty palms if the envelope comes back skinny
    Are there SAT’S? --somewherte I remember a ratio of one in seven accepted. (I’m choking here on the word accepted–what the fuck is this supposed to be, Brown?Apparently, they DID’ have a “curriculum”.

It’s worth noting that the Saudi al queda operation has gone “virtual”–it’s a mirror of the early Dean site, ie:do your thing, don’t wait to ask.

this was foolishly or disingenuously cited by an admin spokesman as a sign that Al q was disintegrating.

Yeah, disintegrating lke a cloud of poison gas…

so question number three is, this: Is our present management in any stretch of the imagination equal to the task. I submit one comparison for purposes of this sub section of the post:

You are captain of the intelligence team, and you are choosing players.
your choice:

John Ashcroft, Achmad Chalabi, Ayman al Zwahiri, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (after a couple of cups of coffee…).

Tell me with a straight face you take Ashcroft.

2

Silly OP, Ascroft is not the inteligence team, NSA, CIA, SIS, Secret Service (don’t call them SS), GCHQ, … are the inteligence team, and aint nobody arround to compete with them (since KGB went awol).
Problem is blowing shit up is easy, stopping people doing that is hard.

3

I should have generalized as the overall “team”

It’s just that I couldn’t resist the internal irony of Ashcroft and “intelligence” in the same paragraph…

4

Why not? We all know the difference. :slight_smile:

5

Alaric, take 5 minutes to put together some paragraphs or something. I have no idea what your argument is.

6

sorry

the riff on the al quada application form was unsupported by the appropriate cite.
it was really an aside.

the issues, seriatim, related to the numbers in the op

  1. it was stupid to publicize the details about the mechanics of apartment house demolition.

  2. The publicity complained of in 1 was undertaken for a meretricious purpose, \viz, to influence the upcoming supreme court decision in Padilla v. Ashcroft (or vice versa, I forget who is appealing)

  3. somewhat incidentally, can’t we get better help? I feel like Felix Alou back in Montreal, and, like the Yankees are coming to town (I know, wrong leagues, I’m just sayin, our guys are outgunned, smarts-wise.

7

I beg to differ, as, I suppose, would the intelligence agencies around the world. The CIA is hardly in a class by itself, though it no longer has the epic struggle with the KGB, there are intelligence forces from Russia South Africa who are still in operations.

I’d venture to say that the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and Israelis all deal with more terrorism on a daily basis than the CIA does in a year (That’s obvious hyperbole, but you get the point).

8

True but CIA cooperates (though not as well as it shouldy) with the Intelligence agencies of other powers, whilst Iran, China, Israel, etc. tend to be pretty much on their own, So though CIA may be of similar structural status and capacity to the Chinese intelligence service, the combined capabilities of CIA, NSA, SIS, GCHQ +++ is nowadays unmatched.
Unfortunately they just provide the intelligence data, it requires politicians to actually use there own intelligence to make policies from this data.

9

I wouldn’t say they are unmatched. They may be good, but they often contradict each other, and have demonstrated their ability to produce vastly false data. I wouldn’t say they are as good in certain areas as other intelligence agencies. Like every good team, they have strengths, and they have weaknesses. If I wanted someone to defend my city from terrorists, the CIA isn’t going to be choice #1, even with the NSA, SIS, etc backing it up.

Now, if I wanted to overthrow a 3rd world country so a banana company can make more money, then the CIA are my peeps.

Now THIS is true. Much badness could have been avoided had certain members from certain administrations had listened to ALL of their intelligence agencies instead of the one telling them what they wanted to hear.

10

I should have linked to this part of the story:

I was tripping on the idea that you had to “apply” to join al-quaeda, and tht they seem to have had the equivalent of an "admissions office’ with official forms, for cryin’ out loud!

That triggered the college application association, the skinny envelope means you are rejected, and they don’t have to send you a catalog, cause you aiint taken’ no classes in THESE Ivy covered halls, which made me imagine:

Hey, Habib–did you hear from any schools>

Not yet, mahmoud–but my fingers and toes are crossed for the big Q–you know they scouted me at Masar-i-sharif. No lie–the scouting report said I had

“good hands”:can put together a stinger launcher in the dark just by feeling the parts",

I’m in line for a full ride…

But my 'Sama Acolyte Test scores are shaky, you know how I am about standardized tests…

How was I to know that I needed a number two penciil with a sharp point…?

11

oops-missed the link:http://news.google.com/news?q=padilla++al-qaeda+application+form&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=nn

US Says Padilla Conspired with Al Qaeda
NPR (audio) - 18 hours ago
… Mr. COMEY : The FBI found Padilla’s application to the al-Qaeda training camp. … each with the title at the top `Mujahideen Identification Form-slash-New …

12

Well, they said he was conspiring to blow things up long ago. I think they added details in order to quell the public reaction to his status.

I think this is unlikely. Any evidence they have of these plans could have been offered to said judges without the security problems. There does not seem to be any reason to release the information unless a)For some reason it is not allowed in court; or b)the idea you are proposing was to incite public opinion to influence the judges. I don’t know enough to speculate on a, but b is the reason that supreme court judges are appointed for life.

13

The NYTimes ran an article where they discussed this plan with some engineers. They weren’t impressed:

14

So basically what we’ve got here is another example of fear mongering in the news media. Like that’s anything new.

15

Except it was also “the news media” that exposed the plot as nothing to be worried about.