Tracking Terror
A battle-hardened veteran of the jihad comes to a major American city. He has all the skills and tradecraft he learned fighting a military superpower.
This jihadi recruits a small group of like-minded sympathizers and together they carry out a bold plan to attack the most striking symbols in that city.
Sound far-fetched? Think again. Think about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the first one. A man named Ramzi Yousef was the veteran of Afghan training camps who brought together a group of plotters to deadly effect.
Now consider the Iraq war and the possibility that it might spin off hundreds or thousands of committed jihadis who have a combination of fervor and lethality - and that one might be coming to a city near you, ready to repeat history.
That's the next big fear -- the one that has intelligence and counterterrorism experts in places like the Pentagon, the National Security Agency and some of America's biggest cities so worried.
Osama bin Laden raised the specter of such an attack in his recent audio message: "Iraq has become a magnet for attracting and training talented fighters."
Bin Laden boasted Islamic terrorists were able to carry out attacks in Madrid and London, adding, "the reason of the delay of similar operations in America is only a matter of time. It is not because we could not penetrate your measures. The operations are in the planning stages, and you will see them in the heart of your homeland as soon as the planning is complete."
While bin Laden may be in no position to order fresh attacks, he remains a powerful inspiration for jihadis.
posted by zoe @ 6:38 PM
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