With half us already "vetted" with the old vaccine which I am told is remarkably strong even after forty or fifty years, and the other half selectively immunized in pockets where attacks have occured... there would probably not be nearly as many as 1000 dead, I am guessing. More like 250 sick, with a few immuno deficiency types and elderly "already on death's door" being at risk of death... probably LESS than the west nile virus deaths.
Their goal is not just our death... it's to cripple our commerce and infrastructure... They are terrified of our ability to work and make a living... and export FREEDOM to the world. The world they think is THEIRS... to rule over.
I really think that al-Qaeda is pretty ineffectual. Yeah, I think we should find these muslim whackos and lock 'em up and throw away the key whenever we do -- I'm all for that. But I think the best way to conceptualize this is that al-Qaeda is a gang of fanatical morons who are largely incapable of doing anything themselves, but who provide a convenient repository of muscle for much more sophisticated thugs, notably Saddam Hussein. There is an enormous gap in sophistication between the 9-11 operation and most of the other al-Qaeda activities we have seen, such as the shoe bomber or the LAX shooter. It's the same if you look back to the original attempt on the WTC. A bunch of dim-witted losers were planning pipe bomb attacks on Jews in Brooklyn, and then all of a sudden this very mysterious, sophisticated, very un-Islamic figure, "Ramzi Yousef" (to use one of his many names) appears out of nowhere (actually, he was carrying an Iraqi passport) and redirects them into an attempt to knock down the WTC and kill 200,000 people. Something else is going on here, something quite different from what most people imagine.
This is not to say that al-Qaeda is not dangerous. In the first place, the establishment of an "Assassination Bureau" of would-be suicidal human missiles, ready to be contracted out to generic anti-Jewish and anti-American missions, is a revolutionary military development. Mate these suicidists to low-tech, biological WMD, and you have something every bit as revolutionary as the nuclear-tipped ICBM. In the second place, the impressive discipline and economy of means demonstrated in the 9/11 attacks may educate and inspire them to higher things. (Note, however, that the Islamists will never learn how to build jet airliners and skyscrapers -- there are limits to the "monkey see, monkey do" principle.) But, I think we need to get real: these people did not go from being a ragtag bunch of miscreants to an efficient, hyper-intelligent mobile fighting force overnight. They are still dorks. But smart people can build great empires on the backs of dorks, after all. Our real concern should be the "brain bug" in Baghdad, not a bunch of wankers living in a bedsit in Joisey.