al Qaeda: Target Washington?

US News and World Report has a good piece up on the recently released NIE. After reading it and pondering what we do know of al Qaeda, it's difficult to imagine them mounting a next attack without a major focus on Washington, DC.

There is also an alarming description of the type of attack that al Qaeda's operatives are most interested in staging inside the United States. Unlike the kind of smaller-scale plots seen recently in Europe, such as subway bombings, U.S. intelligence agencies agree that al Qaeda wants its next U.S. attack to be a spectacular one. In particular, operatives want to focus on "prominent political, economic, and infrastructure targets with the goal of producing mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, significant economic aftershocks, and/or fear among the U.S. population."

I'm not suggesting DC would be the only target, but if we flash back to 9/11 and from there on back to the first WTC attack in 93, it's hard to imagine them pulling something off without including Washington as doing so would almost seem like an admission of failure.

When they failed to take down the towers in 93, they didn't give up. They went away, planned and plotted and came back bigger and better. For al Qaeda, the DC element of what essentially was a two-pronged attack (NYC and DC) on 9/11 was really mostly a bust.

The hit on the Pentagon was not nearly as effective as they'd have liked and the second plane went down in a field. Still tragic for us, of course, but in the minds of the men that do the planning for al Qaeda, it's hard to view it as anything but a failure. One I suspect their reliance on impression and reputation will cause them to want to address.

Comments

[shirley martinez]

if this is true show the americans the proof not rumors which caused the war we want proof

[Elaine Johnson]

This still bugs me. 9/11/2001, Pentagon. Where is the Boeing 757-sized hole? In fact, where is the Boeing 757? - http://i19.tinypic.com/4t7idnb.png

[IslamoLlama]

*hands Dan a clean pair of pants*
Try to drink fewer liquids when you open up the Drudge Report in the morning, bud. You go through those too fast.

[joe]

What is an IslamoLlama?

[Phoenix]

They probably have Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C in the works as we type. I just dread it.