LA Times: Al Qaeda To Attack Major Cities and Remote Areas (excerpted)

LA Times via azcentral.com ^ | 12-23-03

[My Favorite Headache]

WASHINGTON -- Al-Qaida operatives may be plotting several unrelated attacks in the United States, targeting not only major cities but also remote bulwarks of the

[webstersII]

"Again...Why can't they crap on Hollywood?"

They don't want to hurt their friends.

[Dionysius]

I hope they won't destroy the lamp posts because we'll need a place to hang them.

[Headfulofghosts]

I'd say that you look for an attack on a personal target, for example an assassination, I believe that it was a day before September 11, but one of the commanders of the Northern Alliance was assassinated by the Taliban.



The Australian
August 16, 2002
By Kathy Gannon in Kabul

OSAMA bin Laden personally ordered the assassination of Afghan opposition leader Ahmed Shah Massood days before the September 11 attacks, a senior ex-Taliban official has said.

It is the first time a Taliban insider has discussed the terrorist mastermind's role.

Massood, the military chief of the northern alliance, was mortally wounded on September 9 when two suicide attackers posing as television reporters detonated a bomb during an interview in Khodja Bahauddin, in Takhar province.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Mullah Mohammed Khaksar, the former Taliban deputy interior minister, said bin Laden had ordered the two suicide bombers diverted from a trip to Indonesia and sent them on the mission.

Khaksar said that on September 9 he had gone to the home of Taliban Interior Minister Abdul Razzak to pay respects for the death of Razzak's father.

Razzak, who has eluded capture by the US-led coalition, had contacts with bin Laden, and two Saudis that Khaksar believed to be al-Qaeda members were at the wake.

Khaksar said the two Saudis, whom he did not identify, told him of bin Laden's role and assured him that Massood was dead. The northern alliance had withheld confirmation of his death for 48 hours until a successor could be chosen.

"They said 'no, believe me he is gone'," Khaksar said, referring to Massood.

"They also said that he was killed by two Arabs who were supposed to go to Indonesia but were ordered to go to Massood and kill him. The order came from Osama. He cancelled their trip to Indonesia."

The United States has said it believes bin Laden had foreknowledge of the plot to kill Massood, but has not said what level of involvement he had in the plot.

The assassins were travelling on Belgian passports, and in January police in Paris arrested two men for allegedly providing false documents to Massood's killers.

The French authorities believed the passports were stolen from the Belgian consulate in Strasbourg, France, or its embassy in The Hague, Netherlands.

There has been wide speculation that bin Laden may have killed Massood to ingratiate himself further with Taliban leader Mohammed Omar and ensure his protection if the Americans retaliated for the attacks he knew were only days away in the United States.

Khaksar said bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, were among the mourners for Razzak's father, but they met the Taliban minister separately at a mansion on the grounds of the royal palace.

Although September 11 was only two days away, Khaksar said no one at the wake spoke of anything unusual in the works.

All of the talk had to do with the death of Massood, the Taliban's mortal enemy.

"No one talked about September 11 or said that anything was going to happen.

"I think that it was so secret that no one knew."

Khaksar, who broke with the Taliban after the fall of Kabul in November, said the Taliban leadership was convinced bin Laden was behind the September 11 attacks. At the time, he said, al-Qaeda seemed invincible.

[Squantos]

But.............blink ...blink....blink....blink......that's cheating ain't it ?.......:o)

Thanks ya'll !........Happy and Safe Holidays !

[ladyinred]

If the administration just sat there and didn't warn us when the chatter is clearly very high risk, then the people of this nation would just go ballistic. I swear, he is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't. I am convinced some people are not going to be pleased with anything he does no matter what. He did the right thing telling us.

[fourhorsemen]

It would be extremely difficult to carry out any of the scenarios you suggest. Times Square is locked down, anyone getting near the place is searched and scanned by a metal detector. Same for major sporting events. Heck, I was checked with a wand when going to a Diamondbacks game in August.

Suicide bombings against malls aren't in-line with Al Qaeda's style. They look for mass casualties. Suicide bombers wouldn't kill more than a few dozen per strike.

Dirty bombs are over-hyped, other than the initial blast, they aren't likely to pose much of a health threat, though they will cause a huge panic.

Nukes scare me, but they are so difficult to transport and maintain that they aren't likely weapons.

Airplane strikes are going to fail as well given that CAPs are being conducted over major cities and we're watching anything that veers off course like a hawk.

My biggest fear is that someone would pick up on Youseff's work and organize the mass downing of multiple commercial airlines using bombs that can easily be assembled in airplane lavatories after ingredients are snuck on board in harmless looking containers.

I guess we'll wait and see.

[fourhorsemen]

Attacks on rural churches on Christmas Eve. Our church will have 500 worshippers. 2 Islamowhackos with machine guns could kill 400+ people in less than 5 minutes and escape.

No, they would likely kill a few dozen, the rest would be running out the exits, or hiding under furniture. A few might even return fire.

[Dems_R_Losers]

What's the Al Qaida target in Rappahannock County, VA? (A Drudge link mentions Rappanhannock as one of two 'rural locations' that are threatened.)

Is that a watershed area for urban populations, maybe?

Lake Anna nuclear power plant.

[jstolzen]

The USA will not use nuclear weapons against other nations, even in response to a significant WMD attack stateside.

I believe you are VERY wrong.

IF a WMD attack were to ever happen here (God forbid), the American response would be MASSIVE & COMPLETE.

There is simply no other way.

[Indie]

Bush's information also said their was a credible and imminent threat of WMD from Iraq - and they didn't even have any!"

Yeah they did. It's either in Syria or buried, most likely Syria. Hell they used the damn things before! Of course they had them!

[Indie]

Go ahead....make my day.
Lock and load. There will be no passes.

[Heyworth]

IF a WMD attack were to ever happen here (God forbid), the American response would be MASSIVE & COMPLETE.

There is simply no other way.

On who? If NYC vaporizes at the stroke of midnight on Christmas, and it turns out to be an AQ cell made up of Saudis, Yemenis, and Indonesians, based out of Rome, using a bomb bought from the Russian black market with money raised among Arab-Americans in Detroit, who would we bomb?

[Sender]

Actually, right after 9/11 when we really were at 'code red', air transportation was halted and other transportation severely affected.

I really don't expect us to raise the threat level to 'code red' but only because we probably won't have that level of specific warning before an attack. If they do raise it to 'code red', most of us will be stuck (gladly) staying home and watching events play out on TV.

[onyx]

If they did that, I would not want to be a Moslem in the U.S.

Which makes my premise all the more "inviting" for them. How wonderful it would be to cause civil war on our soil, and hitting our children would surely incite it.

[flamefront]

Phoenix, Az?

[Stonewall Jackson]

A few years ago P.T. Deutermann wrote a book, Train Man, where a domestic terrorist starts hitting the railroad bridges across the Mississippi River. I was stunned to learn that there are only eight such bridges. I hope security has been tightened around these potential targets! Can you imagine what this would do to our economy?

[Malsua]

I believe they would overwhelm a limited area downwind of the site(s) with radiation, but would only bring trace increases to the vast majority of the world. There would be localized problems in the affected area(s) for years, with contamination of crops and the water supply, but the idea of the whole planed being irreparably poisoned by a limited nuclear strike is simply not true. Too bad for the folks in the immediate vicinity, though.

Depends. If Cobalt-60 Bombs are used and in larger quanities, they can kill the planet. Their half-life is long enough that enough particles with enough radiation can encircle the globe. As far as I know, the US doesn't have any of these. Russia might however. Our standard fusion bomb in the high hundred+ Kiloton to megaton range is pretty clean(as far as nukes go anyway).

Cobalt shelled fusion bombs are called "salted"...the more Cobalt you "salt" on to the shell the longer that part of the Earth is going to be unihabitable(salted) after you light this thing. Cobalt-60 emits Gamma for 5 years minimum. Very very dirty. None have ever been tested as far as I've ever heard.