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Did anyone else see Bob Woodward on Larry King last night? He made one interesting comment/question: with all of the possible things that terrorists could do in the US, almost anything really: suicide bombings at malls, coordinated firearm attacks, bombings, fires, etc. But nothing has happened since 9/11, nothing. Why? Woodward asked the same question, why has nothing happened?

Opinions?

Just my opinion,

But I believe Al Queda shot it’s wad on 9/11, I believe that Osama Bin Laden knew full and well that once 9/11 went down he and his followers were marked men.

What would be left would be a bunch of smaller less well-organized cells relying on only their training and what little coordination and funding that would remain just out of reach of the USA.

We will see another terror attack and probably soon but it won’t be like 9/11 and it won’t be that grand.

For two reasons, one we are slaughtering evildoers all over the world on a daily basis, many battles are being fought right as we speak and many more will never be known to the public.

Second, the government cannot risk another failure, which resulted in 9/11, and Bush knows that. Could you imagine the cries and howls, which would come if another 9/11-scale attack happened tomorrow?

Honestly I believe that someone in the government knows full and well that if suicide bombers began blowing themselves up in our shopping malls and grade schools, that the worst nightmare would be the armed populace, not fear of the terrorist.

And the terrorist worst fear would not come from the police or at the hands of some Spec Ops type, but at the hands of not knowing who is armed in a crowd of hundreds.

TMMT

With all of the possible things that terrorists could do in the US, almost anything really: suicide bombings at malls, coordinated firearm attacks, bombings, fires, etc. But nothing has happened since 9/11, nothing. Why? Woodward asked the same question, why has nothing happened?

Opinions?

I suspect that Al Queda probably isn't nearly as big as what most of us think. There's no question they caught us napping on 9/11, but I'm starting to believe more and more that they may have blown their wad that day. Don't forget that security has really been intensified since then, and lots of the hard-core fanatics have already been arrested and sent down to Guantanamo Bay. I also wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them come here with evil intent and then turn out to be unreliable. Maybe some of them just aren't fanatic enough to the cause, or they spend a bunch of time here and decide that they're having too much of a good time to get themselves arrested or blown up.

But nothing has happened since 9/11, nothing. Why?

I ask myself that regularly.

I hope the answer is that they completely underestimated the depth and breadth of the response from the U.S. We rounded up enough of the actual bad guys early enough that the remainder is simply hoping to get through the each day without getting dragged off to Gitmo.

I hope the answer is not that they are well able to carry out such attacks, but are lying low until the next big attack. Penny-ante suicide bombings and sabotage would serve only to put everyone on guard without actually doing much damage.

Opinions?

It seems ludicrously easy to cause small-scale destruction in the US. A few dynamite bombs in crowded theaters during the opening of "T3", or a shoot-em-up at a few big malls. So why haven't they done this? I believe the terrorists are addicted to the psychologically grand gesture, the symbol-laden gesture. Destroying the Brooklyn Bridge/Washington Monument is acceptable, but a penny-ante mall sniper-fest doesn't fit in with their millenarist delusions. They want to show how powerful they are, and this requires a powerful terrorist act. Remember: terrorism is a actually a weak man's game.

Why? Woodward asked the same question, why has nothing happened? Opinions?

Gitmo. And the various places where several hundred who were rounded up in the days and months following 9-11-2001 are held. It takes time to infiltrate more Islamikazies.

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.