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Lord Merciless
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They are going to attack Indonesia, a place where Al-Qaeda is strong and government weak.
They would of course love to attack the US directly, but it's kind hard here because Middle Easter types are very closely watched by the population. Unless they can recruit lots of locals, I doubt Al-Qaeda has the necessary infracstruture in this country to pull-off a major attack.
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The Emperor Fabulous
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Apolyton's Resident Actor-in-Training
Aug 1999
time: 00:30
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Well look at this:
quote:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Department of Homeland Security advisory issued Thursday warns that al Qaeda is working on plans to hijack airliners flying between international points that pass near or over the continental United States.
A Department of Homeland Security official said most of the flights fitting this description originate in Canada, and that U.S. officials have been working with Canada over the past month to ensure it is improving screening and other security measures.
One government official noted, however, the United States has no authority to require security measures of non-U.S. carriers whose flights originate outside the United States.
The advisory was issued because of concerns about the coming second anniversary of the September 11 attacks, a recent uptick in intelligence information, and threats to aviation that continued through the summer.
Issued to state and local authorities and the private sector, the advisory said terrorist operatives have been studying countries to determine which have the least stringent requirements for entry. That could be a factor in their consideration of which flights would be easiest to board and take control of.
The advisory includes a laundry list of possible attack scenarios, and says al Qaeda may be researching how to disseminate diseases and toxins by contaminating water and food, or aerosolizing an agent in an enclosed space.
But the advisory says there is no specific information on individual targets or dates that would warrant raising the nation's threat alert level from the current yellow (elevated) to orange (high).
Some tactical information and six pages of suggested protective measures were redacted from the version of the advisory provided to the press.
Risk of multiple attacks
The advisory says that arrests of key al Qaeda members over the past several months "may have delayed or even disrupted some plans," but a Homeland Security official would not provide any details. The official did say that interrogations of those detainees produced some of the information contained in the advisory. Intercepted communications and materials seized in raids of al Qaeda safe houses were other sources of the intelligence, the official said.
The advisory cites the risk of multiple attacks against the United States and U.S. interests overseas. It notes recent mass-casualty attacks in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Iraq, "suggesting that 'soft' targets with minimum physical security measures could be viewed as attractive options in the U.S."
Among the sorts of soft targets mentioned in operational plans are apartment complexes, gas stations and restaurants.
The advisory also says critical infrastructure could be hit because of the "potentially significant economic and psychological impacts." Examples of critical infrastructure listed as possible targets are nuclear power plants and other energy facilities, petroleum and chemical facilities, the transportation sector, water systems, and the food supply.
The advisory notes that al Qaeda has successfully used suicide bombers and warns that terrorists "will employ novel methods to artfully conceal suicide devices."
Earlier in the day, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge held a conference call with state officials to tell them there are no plans at present to raise the threat level in advance of the September 11 anniversary. According to one participant in the call, Ridge said there had been an uptick in threat information, but not in the quantity or quality that would warrant moving from yellow to orange.
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You may, unfortunately, be proven right...
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Dr Strangelove
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How about the United Nations? Someone was idiotic enough to bomb a UN facitility in Iraq, so why not the big HQ in New York?
They could try Washington again.
Look, these guys might even be psycho enough to bomb Mecca. All it would take is for a bunch of them to get their looney toons juices worked up, then they'd find some perfectly logical psycho reason to go bomb their own holiest of holy. You know, something along the lines of beibng tainted by the presence of the infidels. Alternately they might try to bomb something significant in Riyadh. Sure, it would p**s off their bankrollers, but then who are we talking about?
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Comrade Tassadar
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I *highly* doubt they would try to bomb Mecca. They would have to be really psycho to unite the Muslims against them.
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Comrade Tassadar
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I don't think the US can withdraw from iraq now. However this does benefit OBL since Iraq is basically a continous political liability for the US, and we can't escape it.
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04-09-2003 22:26
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