Officials: 'Chatter' hints at major attack

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Eli


Not only that.

The goal is not to kill, but to terrorize. Until now people knew that not getting close to landmarks like the White House, the Empire State Building, etc will keep them safe.

But what if residential complexes start blowing up? Then almost everyone will be in danger.

but i think that only works if they blow up a lot of residential complexes (note to eli - not all that many americans outside of largest metro areas live in even midrise complexes - in most areas "apartments" are in 2 or 3 story "garden apartment" complexes) And its apparently fairly difficult and costly for Al qaeeda to set up and maintain a cell in CONUS (continental US) In contrast to say Saudi or Morocco, and even more in contrst with the israeli situation, where Hamasniks can walk across the border. So theres a logic to focusing on high value, high visibility targets. If it was easy to do large numbers of smaller scale attacks AQ should have done those in the months following 9/11 - that would have been the time to overwhelm and demoralize us.

It may be that they didnt think it necessary then, and so didnt prepare for it - they predicted correctly that 9/11 alone would bring us to afghan, but they incorrectly predicted the shape of the Afghan war. Now they are attempting to rebuild and implement plan B - so it might included what you have mentioned, but OTOH it should be much harder to infiltrate and maintain cells in CONUS now than in late 2001. We have better border control now than then, and one assumes the FBI has heavily infiltrated the muslim communities where AQ types might look for cover. And the physical barriers are much greater - jersey walls around so many targets - here in DC not just the obvious govt buildings, but EVERY govt building, and all the museums as well. Granted they might get away with some midrise apartment complexes for a while, but i think the cost benefit wont look all that good for them.

[Timexwatch]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
I wonder what sort of attack they will try to pull? Do they have anymore access to chemical or biological weapons? Could some have been smuggled out of Iraq before it fell? I doubt the latter. If Iraq had had significant stocks of NBC weapons surely they wouldn't have been able to transport the entire stock, inn whih case their should be at least some evidence left behind.

If NBC attacks aren't feasible then what? They've tried vehicular bombs here with results that were less than they had hoped, still, such weapons have been the stock in trade for Islamic terrorists for 30 years, so that might be what they try. Most of the good targets in Washington however are not easily reached by vehicular bombs. Most of the major Federal buildings (White House, Capitol, Supreme Court) are set back from the street and woul be insulated from a blast by distance.

Would they try hijacking airplanes again? Are the airlines adequately protected?

Around Capitol Hill, the House and Senate Office Buildings are blocked off by those ubiquitous concrete "flowerbeds" and those faux-historic metal poles in order to prevent suicide bombings. The sidestreets are blocked by those flip-up metal barriers. It's like that around most federal buildings. One problem I've foreseen would be Motorcycle bombs; small enough to get around the barriers and hit a target with a decent about of firepower.

What I'm worried about are teams of "run and gun" suicide bombers. I could foresee teams of men suprising entrance guards and suicide bombing a building. In addition, DC has a lot of "soft" targets like the Smithsonians, Holocaust Museum and several Universities that would be vulnerable to attack.


Maybe I'm just a bit jumpy. At least I'm out of DC for the time being.

[Sava]

mmmm Tang is good...

I wouldn't be as critical of this stupid system if it were run by intelligent people. Face it, the American intelligence community is inept. The politicians running it are stupid (Bush, Ridge, Ashcroft). And the methods for guaging threat are lame.

"There were explosions in Saudi Arabia."
"OBL is using his cell phone"

RAISE THE ALERT

[Japher]

My sources tell me that Al-Qaeda plans on amassing about 1,000 of their loyal morons in London. They will storm Nelson square, and promptly (and aptly) stab themselves as a sign of aggression

[Sava]

We should be so lucky...

[Edan]

Originally posted by rah
I think a rash of snipers would be the most effective from a terror standpoint. Look how disruptive the last sniper was. Imagine 25 to 50 of them spread across the country.

Except that part of the reason the sniper was effective for so long was that the son/father team were loners (and knew the area well). If you have 25 snipers working accross the US, at least one of them will be caught fairly early on, which will make it easier to find the others (having some idea whos behind it, more of an idea of what to look at, questioning, etc), which probably wouldn't make it as effective as 25 times the sniper. (And frankly, a sniper wouldn't really concern me that months. Yeah, its scary, but less than 10 people dead out of millions? I would be more cautious but hardly paniced).

[Timexwatch]

Originally posted by Edan


Except that part of the reason the sniper was effective for so long was that the son/father team were loners (and knew the area well). If you have 25 snipers working accross the US, at least one of them will be caught fairly early on, which will make it easier to find the others (having some idea whos behind it, more of an idea of what to look at, questioning, etc), which probably wouldn't make it as effective as 25 times the sniper. (And frankly, a sniper wouldn't really concern me that months. Yeah, its scary, but less than 10 people dead out of millions? I would be more cautious but hardly paniced).

You would be suprised at the amount of fear the sniper generated in the Greater DC area. People were doing everything from running to their cars in a grocery store parking lot to refusing to get gas. Along with the false story that the sniper was in a "white delivery truck", you can't imagine the amount of hysteria that was generated.

One example of how bad the situation was: The gas stations that had tarps hung to restrict line of sight or Guardian Angels pumping gas were the only ones that were doing decent business.

[rah]

You rack up a couple hundred sniper deaths across a large area, and you'd have panic. The anytime anyplace anybody element is quite effective in making people act irrational. Especially if you could do a few in each city, when one got caught, the second one starts. It would be months before things returned to anything resembling normal.

[Az]

Yep, Rah has a point. "Oridnary weapons" are still a great choice for such a course of action.

If they'd be able to amass well trained people with assualt rifles, even, on a scale of 20 to 30 people, they'd already be able to kill hundreds. How about they raid a couple of buildings in Manhatten, 5 people on every building, they'd kill scores. Planting a truckbomb in a NY appartment building will also kill a lot.

[gunkulator]

"Oh Muslims, take your decision against the embassies of America, England, Australia and Norway, their interests, their companies and their employees," the speaker [Ayman al-Zawahri ]said. "Turn the earth under their feet into fire."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp..._qaida_tape_12

Norway????