Sure, but none of this diverts very far from the overall agenda: which was to get the U.S. to attack Middle Eastern countries and divert much of our military might there so they could pick at us more easily. That we went in swinging on the basis of only one attack is the same good effect from one attack that they expected would take several attacks. Of course, it probably would have happened without any attacks, so really they were wasting their time altogether.
It’s also a little hard to trust the very selectively released quotes from a confession of one of America’s deadliest enemies who has pretty much nothing to gain by telling us the truth.
Er, no, he didn’t. I mean, given the pressure he was under, his actual response seems explicable if not exactly laudable, but he seems to have done the worst of both worlds: he both waited way too long to negotiate and then hit hard: but in a way that was halting and telegraphed too far in advance as Taliban and Al Qaeda quietly retreated in the face of the slow moving NA we relied upon to do most of the actual fighting.
But I guess being a Bush lover, letting the major figures get away to plot and spread propaganda against for two more years, letting us get duped by a bunch of local warlords into doing their petty business of infighting, and not using significant US ground troops when it was needed was all a brilliant tactical decision that we have just yet to appreciate the fruits of.
Noted and mostly in agreement with, though it’s not entirely clear how hard any of it was with the new powers they had to play with and given the new motivation. Too bad it took 9/11 to get him to spend time on something other than euthanasia and medicinal pot.
So, maybe, given the “unprecedented collaboration to defeat terrorism”, Al Qaeda just prefers to wait until it gets its hands on some WMDs to use in the US, and that’s why we haven’t seen anything yet.
If anything , it was breaking up Al Q’s logistics networks that probably have held off any further attacks. For every person that they may have arrested , most likely thousands more have been scared into rolling over for the security folks , and ratting on various groups and people.
Increased vigilance has probably turned thousands of previous soft targets into higher risk targets. For their limited ability , they have to justify the biggest bang for their buck , on whats probably a limited amount of remaining capital.
Al Q is a franchise operation , as has been previously noted. All places that have come under attack , have signifigant populations of Arabs or Muslims , or have access to the border of Iraq from neighboring countries. With all incoming travelers being more screened , its not hard to figure out that its not a healthy proposition for terrorists to come into the states.
Add into the equation that the type of person that enters the US has to be able to blend in to a certain extent.
IT was probably easier in the early days for Syria and Iran to let persons transit to Iraq , this has now changed and the border crossings are more tight, and the host nations are being pressured into co-operating with the American authorities in Iraq.
Yes , if the worst comes to pass , release em and pay em off
He can say that now , cause he is not president , but I dont think his administration would have acted any different , in the major areas. In some ways the presidency is the direct will of the people , if the people wanted to nuke afganistan, then it would have happened.
There isn’t and never was a terrorist around every corner as Bush wants us to believe.
There are a lot less terrorists worldwide and they aren’t as well organized as many would like to believe.
They were lucky with 9-11 and like winning the lottery, luck doesn’t often strike the same person/group twice.
If terrorists truly were an organized group, there are many targets of opportunity that could have been hit. For instance, 60 minutes ran a show a few months back about how something like 60 major chemical processing plants nationwide (all with very large caches of potentially explosive chemicals) were wide open to anyone who wanted to just walk in and take their time to do whatever they wanted. This is a big country with a lot of potential targets for someone with access to explosives who knows what they are doing.
To me, the fact that all this “opportunity” exists but nothing has happened, isn’t primarily because of what the U.S. authorities have done to prevent any incidents but because the terrorist threat here is a lot smaller than many want to believe.
For the most part , North America was seen to be untouchable , in regards to terrorist activities. The various groups use North America as a veritable cash cow, from donations and activities.
First, let me point out that the first time Osama’s boys tried to destroy the World Trade Center was on February 26. 1993. They did damage but not what they had hoped. I took eight years for them to have a success. In between there was another terrorist bombing in Oaklahoma City in 1995, oh, but that was white supremacists rather than Moslem extremists and they only killed 168 people, so I guess that doesn’t count.
Terrorist activities take time and money to plan and execute? I look around home at where we are weak and I see that a couple of guys with a couple of drums of available chemicals could easily poison a small town’s water supply. There are any number of things that would be cheap and easy for someone, up to no good, to do to make life miserable for someone.
I doubt this. No matter who was President, national security would have been ramped up to comparable levels. The side defending it and the side crying “Fascism!” would simply have flip-flopped.
I can’t find a cite, but Time magazine in either its latest, or just previous, issue, mentions that at least a couple of those released from Guantanamo were discovered back in Afghanistan, fighting for the Taliban again. So even an administration that got the Patriot Act passed is going to see some instances of recidivist terrorism.
I think as we get closer to the elections, the chances of a terrorist action go up. It worked in Spain, and I imagine al-Queda is willing to try it here in the US. Although, as others have posted, it might be difficult to find personnel who are [ul][li]in place, []efficient enough to actually achieve something, and []willing to die for Allah.[/ul] The Shoe Bomber is, I think, a better example of the sort they can recruit. Dangerous, but stupid. [/li]
Regards,
Shodan
I think its sick to think Ashcroft is a hero of any sorts… if your so keen on conservative govt. Sam why weren’t you living with the Taliban ?
Was there a single case of an AQ or terrorist operative being held in the round up that followed 9-11 ? If there are zero cases… then what Terrorist networks were stopped by Ashcroft ? I guess all the terrorists were aboard those planes.
Like many have said ... the terrorist menace in the US never was great... and Gore or Bush... no matter which the increased vigilance certainly is effective enough to prevent 9/11 originating from within the US. Attacks outside the US have been plentiful and are a real menace... a menace only cooperation can deal with.
Afghanistan was a no brainer... Bush did what had to be done, Iraq on the other hand... duh. If Gore had been slack about responding US citizens would have complained.
AQ was surprised not by the speed of the US… but the Northern Alliance response. Without them the US would have take way to long to bring in troops. By killing their leader a week before 9/11… Bin Laden thought they wouldn’t mobilize against the Taliban.
What the? Sam, either you actually mean hundreds rather than hundreds of thousands here, or you are getting seriously confused between Afghanistan and Iraq.
The day after 9-11 and watching the stock markets of the globe crater, my worst case scenario was that AQ would simply set off a car bomb in the US and Europe on a fairly routine basis. It would be so easy to put together and set off low grade car bombs that would keep headlines, injure/kill people, and keep the financial markets in an uproar. Anyone out there seriously think it would be difficult to get the anarchists handbook, slowly purchase enough diesel fuel and fertilizer, obtain a pretty untraceable car, park it somewhere and let it blow up? Phone in the threat or make a claim for responsibility?
Nothing of the sort has happened until Spain, which was a lot bigger than a single car bomb.
I’m sure they’d love to do it just to poke sticks in our eye, but the fact is, this is more than a theory: it’s their stated objective. We are now on step 2: get the U.S. to invade and occupy a ME nation. The reason they can’t get to step 3 is not because they can’t bomb us, it’s because they can’t seem to convince the Middle East to rise up in anything other than disgruntled protest.
Not at all: or else there would have been countless more attacks. As has been noted, if you want weapons of mass destruction to attack the U.S., why would you spend decades trying to build them in an impoverished country under heavy watch from all angles and then find some way to get them into the U.S.? Why not simply walk into the hundreds of sites in our nation where extremely deadly toxic chemicals are protected by the amazing “padlock and chainlink fence” defense most companies can barely bring themselves to provide out of their own good nature. Why not take out the two security guards that guard some of the most horrible biological weapons known to man that are stored in a building on an island that only escapes condemnation because it has special permission? The fact is, there really aren’t, as Shodan says, that many people who have access to the U.S., aren’t insane, and would be willing to do something like this even if it meant their own deaths. Even in the worst area of all for inspiring and recruiting terrorists, it’s still a tiny minority of Palestinians who are actually willing to do the dirty work of terrorist attacks and suicides, as opposed to just tolerating or cheering them on.
I don’t understand the need for big bombs and mass destruction to make a point. As I said in a thread surrounding the Washington, DC - Northern Virginia shootings months ago, a dozen two-person sniper teams shooting only ten people a day each, then moving on to different locales (big cities, small towns, rural areas, etc.) would have a much greater and longer lasting impact. Coordinate the shootings to take place in the six weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Year’s and this country will be total lockdown before the new year begins.
With consumer spending accounting for two-thirds of the US economy, and most retailers needing to make the bulk of their sales in the six week period, it’s not rocket science to appreciate the gravity of it all. The US economy would come to a complete stop. Shopping malls would shut down, schools would be closed, yadda, yadda. The various law enforcement agencies from Barney Fife on up to the FBI would be strained beyond imagination.
Sure, a number of these teams would be caught or shot dead. Yet enough would remain to instill a much longer-lasting psychological trauma nation-wide. I’m sure many Americans not living in big cities and classic vulnerable locations would not be as non-plussed as they are right now.
I’m not so sure it would. This would need to be a fairly massive ongoing operation. Lots of training and operatives involved, a good chance for them to get caught in planning stages, plenty of people captured to rat out what they know, and the effect wouldn’t be all that great. The snipers scared a lot of people, but they didn’t have THAT much of an effect, especially for people in other states/cities/regions.
So a dozen sniper teams in a dozen states, each team shooting ten people a day and then moving on to a different location (50, 100, 200 miles a day?) wouldn’t give people the shits in due course?
I don’t believe there are enough terrorists here or that they are coordinated enough to pull this off. But it would make for a good movie or part of a “24” plot.