Analysis: Where will they strike next? – 1

(This is the first of two parts.) Where will al Qaida strike next? The question has a ghoulish horror to it. And it is also akin to finding a needle in a haystack — blindfolded. They could, of course, choose to strike anywhere. And yet, at least some frameworks of probability and thinking based on what is known of their past methodologies can be explored. In a paper released shortly after the infamous attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, destroyed the World Trade Towers and mauled the Pentagon, taking 3,000 lives, analyst Joshua Sinai of the Virginia-based ANSER, or Analytical Services Inc., noted that al Qaida had always approached their previous targets in a systematic way. In the paper, entitled “Forecasting the Next Waves of Catastrophic Terrorism,” Sinai observed that al Qaida liked to target high-profile and symbolic symbols and centers, and when any of their plans were frustrated, they liked to come back and attack them again, using however different and usually exponentially more lethal weapons of destruction than they had before. Thus, in 1993, the terrorist attempt to destroy the World Trade Towers succeeded in setting a bomb off, but only six people were killed in the attempt, leading to a totally unjustified complacency among U.S. law-enforcement officials — especially at the federal level — and in the U.S. media alike. Very few analysts and commentators noted at the time that the plot was indeed designed to kill tens of thousands of people by collapsing the two great towers and then even setting off cyanide gas to finish off any survivors. Full Story