Al-Qaida targeted Western forests, memo says

Arizona Republic via Drudge ^ | 7/11/2003 | Judd Slivka

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

[A senior al-Qaida detainee told federal investigators he had developed a plan to set midsummer forest fires in Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming, according to the document, obtained by The Arizona Republic. "The detainee believed that significant damage to the U.S. economy would result and once it was realized that the fires were terrorist acts, U.S. citizens would put pressure on the U.S. government to change its policies," the memo said. ]

More significant damage will be caused when WE THE PEOPLE rise up and kill every evil-spawned Muslim son-of-a-bitch on the planet. Awaiting my second post-pull since I joined FR.

[RaceBannon]

It's a good thing we kept this a secret!

[randog]

Many good points made as to why there hasn't been a 9/11 part II, and I'd like to add my 2 cents: Shortly after 9/11, Bush said that we were fighting a new enemy that would require new tactics. I and others took that to mean that this would be a war of spooks and special ops, of bad guys just disappearing in the night and never heard from again, of heroes whose names we will never know or celebrate. IOW, this war is not only being fought visibly (Afghanistan, Iraq), but behind the scenes too, and we may not know what's really happening for a long time, if ever.

[Brad’s Gramma]

Another bump.

[Travis McGee]

What makes you think aggressors will behave rationally in dire straits? Was it rational for Hitler to go to war against the UK, Russia, and declare war on America? Ditto the Japanese.

[b4its2late]

Take a few from Gitmo and drop them from a plane into one of the forest fires along with the retardant..... One way to clean up the earth of these varmints....

[AuntB]

I did not realize the "bombs" that the Japanese dropped in Oregon were for the purpose of fire. Actually the only life lost in the continental states during WW2 was in Oregon (near Klamath Falls) by one of those bombs. A family was out pic-nicing and the father (if I recall) was killed when he tried to examine the device.

[AuntB]

Not sure if anyone said it in public, but a bunch of us sure thought about that.

[Poohbah]

What makes you think aggressors will behave rationally in dire straits? Was it rational for Hitler to go to war against the UK, Russia, and declare war on America? Ditto the Japanese.

That's not the point. The point is that China somehow manages to keep its economy intact through six years of high-intensity warfare in Jeff's series.

I'm less interested in the question of whether they're reality oriented--it's more a question of "how do the keep reality from hitting their head like a 2x4?"

Kind of like a guy jumping off of the Sears Tower. He's going to accelerate towards the center of the earth at a rate of 32.2 feet per second per second, no matter how hard he flaps his arms.

China's that jumper. The ground is about than a quarter-mile away. The results will be felt sooner as opposed to later, the results will not be pretty, and they will not be delayed.

By the end of 2006, in Jeff's scenario, China is completely broke. But they somehow keep fighting into 2012.

We were THE industrial powerhouse of the world in WW2, and we had definite limits on what we could do. (The various flavors of destroyer escort built during WW2--steam turbine/reduction gearing, turbo-electric, and diesel-electric--stand as a testimony to this fact.) We literally ran out of productive capacity in several crucial areas.

And this was in a nation that far more often than not played it straight with the bookkeeping. China is like Enron with a nuclear arsenal.

[Travis McGee]

How did Germany and Russia keep increasing tank and plane production all through WW2 despite everything going on?

[Poohbah]

They used what slack they had--and they had a LOT more slack relative to their economies than the ChiComs do now.

Also, kindly note that the Sovs got Lend-Lease--planes, tanks, trucks, and raw materials.

[RonDog]

ping

[chuckwalla]

Precisely why the 2d ammendment does not limit what type of firearm we can own. An enemy of this type that slinks around like rats can easily evade a uniformed gov. But not the two hundred million people.
If they have smuggled ak's full auto are we better off with what is left after all the bans?
Is a ten rd magazine adequate against terrorists with unlimited choice of firearms?
Why should we be pw'd when they want to kill us too not just the military?

[chuckwalla]

Yeah look at what we did after Pearl Harbor.
They didn't read enough history.

[chuckwalla]

The Japanese also sent about 1500 balloon bombs all the way from Japan. They had baskets with incendiary and he bombs.
Some actually got through and did start some fires but not anyreal problem.

[Jeff Head]

In Volume II of my Dragon's Fury Series, written just after 9-11, terrorists who have infiltrated the United States do exactly what is described in this article along a hundred mile front in southern Colorado.

[Travis McGee]

The probability is now greatly raised, since even the dimmest potential jihadist or ELF now realizes how easy it is to strike "America" with nothing more than a pack of matches.