One hundred men to cripple a nation
Jun. 12th, 2004 06:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pluralOn Thursday the State department got a very ugly black eye when it was forced to recant as inaccurate the much touted April report which claimed that 2003 had fewer terror attacks than any year since 1969. [More Info] Bush & Co. cited this report as proof that the war on terrorism was working. Any attack inside the US would be have a devastating effect on public perception and seriously damage Bush's credibility as "someone who can protect us" with the average American, but an attack within the next month or two would increase that effect enormously as both the image of Bush saying "We are winning the war on terror" and the subsequent recanting of the report used to substantiate that statement would be fresh in peoples minds.
In the time since 9/11 we have become complacent with the many "false starts" of the terror warning/alert system. However in recent months, a much broader range of intelligence has not only reinforced al Qaeda's commitment to carrying out strikes within the US borders but increasingly shown signs that they intend to do so within the next few months. I believe we will see several attempted strikes (which may or may not be successful) in the US before November's election, with the goal of influencing the election. I have seen and heard many arguments which debate whether Bush would be helped by or sunk by a terrorist attack in the run up to the election. I believe it will depend primarily on the severity of the attacks. I think another 9/11 scale attack would likely sink Bush, but smaller more targeted attacks would aid him as the American public tends to fly their most patriotic colors when we are being attacked. The American public has in the past 33 months become accustomed to the danger of attacks in so called primary target areas like New York, DC, and L.A, so if the attacks were limited to our first tier cities and fairly limited in scope, it would not shake the average American's faith in their own security a great deal. It is precisely that faith which al Qaeda desires to shake and if they were successful in doing so, it would hurt Bush tremendously in the election.
Historically Al Qaeda has shown a lack of understanding of the American mentality, and a predisposition towards attacks on prestige targets. They tend to focus their efforts on the international symbols of American power (for example the Pentagon and the World Trade Center). In the past, they have failed to demonstrate an understanding that attacking so called prestige targets wounds our pride and shock us but in the end tends to anger us rather than shatter our faith and our will to fight. The attacks on our Military, like the USS Cole, similarly shocked us, but did little to shake our faith in our own strength and security; rather it was piled on top of the already substantial evidence that the Middle East is an ugly and dangerous place.
This however has already started to change, the Madrid attack demonstrates that al Qaeda's sophisticated ability to plan and coordinate complex and effective strategies to attack has not been significantly diminished and their willingness to direct large scale operations at non-prestige targets. Since Madrid, al Qaeda's efforts have been increasingly focused on smaller more precise attacks. The recent attacks in Saudi Arabia on the residential compounds of western consultant demonstrate al Qaeda's willingness to alter their methods of operation and a very high level of sophistication and understanding of the workings and weakness' of Saudi society. Foreign consultants, primarily from Western Europe and the United States constitute the "brain trust" of Saudi Aramco (the Saudi national oil company) that is needed to keep the Saudi oil system pumping out the millions of barrels of crude oil on which the world depends. In attacking the compounds of Westerners, al Qaeda avoids a public backlash which would result from attacking Aramco infrastructure directly.
"... al-Muqrin (al Qaeda's local military commander, Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin) is well aware of the average Saudi's attachment to the country's oil. Attacking oil assets also attacks the Saudi gravy train -- oil is the source of more than 90 percent of Saudi Arabia's export revenues -- which would elicit a far stronger reaction from the ruling House of Saud and the general population than attacks on resident "infidels." Saudi sentiment embraces the oil complex as the property of the people, not simply the House of Saud's feeding trough. Attacking energy assets would threaten to dull al Qaeda's reputation locally, just as the Nov. 9, 2003, as did the attack against Riyadh's al-Muhaya residential compound. That attack targeted predominately Arab Muslims who happened to work with Western expatriates, and not the expatriates themselves. In contrast, attacking expatriates appears to be broadly popular with the Saudi population. Stratfor sources on both sides of the issue within the kingdom indicate that there is little love lost between the expatriates and the government, which has never made great efforts to integrate the expatriates or make them feel welcome or secure. There is even less of a connection between Saudi citizens and the expatriates, who live and work in heavily guarded compounds." - Peter Zeihan - STRATFOR Briefing - June 8, 2004
Al Qaeda's specific targeting of Western expatriate workers not only strikes directly at the brain stem of Aramco but increases al Qaeda's popular appeal within Saudi Arabia. In the most recent attacks, al Qaeda gunmen targeted western expatriates while sparing the lives of those from other parts of the world, even taking the time to discern a persons origins (at least on two instances through verbal exchanges). This also demonstrates an amount of discipline and motivation among the members of their assault teams and the experience to remain calm while carrying out a mission and refraining from indiscriminate killings. The inability, and even perhaps unwillingness of the Saudi government to take effective measures to protect Aramco's expatriate workers, for example refusing to allow armed private security forces to be imported to guard the compounds, will cause many of these workers to question if even their generous salaries are worth the risk. Attempts to get the US government to pressure the Saudis has been ineffective, at security briefings in the U.S. Embassy, officials are instead telling the expatriates that they "should get the [expletive deleted] out of here." The exodus of western workers which will most likely result from this will have a profound impact on oil production and in the long run cripple Aramco's ability to sustain its current production levels, let alone allow the Saudis to continue be OPEC's swing producer.
Al Qaeda has already announced its intention to start targeting Western corporations. In an audiotape message attributed to Osama bin Laden and broadcast on April 15th by Al Arabiya, al Qaeda threatened western multinationals with attack and singled out Halliburton in particular. A May 29th statement by al-Muqrin claimed that the May 27th attacks in Khobar were linked, at least in part, to an association with Halliburton. These warnings, along with the attacks in Madrid & Saudi Arabia, have led many experts and analysts to predict attacks on multinational corporations both in the US and Abroad and attacks on public transit and chemical storage facilities. These same analysts predict that the attacks will be smaller and more precise in nature, more resembling the recent attacks in Saudi, than a 9/11 scale attack. Suicide bombings and abductions of employees, tactics we have seen used in Iraq, also can not be ruled out. But again with such attacks, as well as other politically minded attacks such as an attack in Bush's home town of Houston, Texas, al Qaeda would missing the pulse of American life. An attack on Halliburton, would not only qualify as I mentioned before as a target which the American public is mentally prepared for, but I can imagine that in the eyes of many left-leaning liberals it may even be perceived, a well deserved blow in response to the corruption and misdealing of a scurrilous multinational company. I expect that as al Qaeda succeeds in carrying out attacks within the US and is able to gauge our response that we can expect to see their understanding of American culture and social perceptions to increase quickly and significantly to a level on par with the sophistication they have shown in Saudi Arabia.
While the horror of 9/11 stunned our nation and was incredibly successful both in a tactical and psychological sense, smaller more targeted attacks, especially focusing on Corporate targets and remote storage facilities will not have nearly the same impact. A Madrid-style attack on the mass transit systems of one or more major cities would have a much greater psychological impact on the nation. We already know that Al Qaeda considered using a strategy of smaller more targeted attacks before the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. However these styles of attack requires significantly more preoperational intelligence and planning to be effective and are far more susceptible to detection by active counter-terrorism security forces, and it is likely that at that time al Qaeda was not operating within the US on the scale and sophistication necessary to effectively leverage that type of strategy. However that is unlikely to be the case today, as on 9/11 al Qaeda demonstrated they had both the resources and the sophistication to carry out highly complex preoperational planning, and effectively exploit weaknesses in our security strategies. It would be foolish to think that the absence of attacks in the United States is the result of complacency or even competency on the part of counter-terrorism and law enforcement, we must consider the more likely possibility that al Qaeda has merely been waiting, watching and planning their next series of moves, and it is my belief that the upcoming election provides both an abundance of targets and a profitable environment to magnify the effect of any such attacks.
The simple fact is that the US is far too large and too free of a country to have any real ability to secure us against small scale terrorist attacks. Israel by comparison has a vastly smaller geographical area (it is slightly smaller than New Jersey) and its citizens are more willing to accept soldiers in the streets and being inconvenienced by security measures and possesses what is undeniably the best counter-terrorism intelligence and security force in the world, and they are still unable to entirely secure their borders and cities against terrorism. It is highly unlikely that American law enforcement is trained; equipped or adequately staffed enough to even come close to mimicking Israel's impressive record of preventing over 90% of attempted terrorist attacks.
Now I will pause here to remind you that I make no claim to prescience, and everything going forward is simply an intellectual exercise on my part, in which I examine our society and the infrastructure of our country from the position of someone wanting to wreak maximum destruction and havoc. You may find this disturbing or unpleasant, but if you have gotten this far you can probably handle it. I will take into account the rough outlines of what we know of al Qaeda's capabilities and allow myself a limited amount of flexibility to account for al Qaeda's demonstrated ability to alter their tactics and methods to their advantage in a particular situation. I am also varying to tactics to maximize the shock effect and to steadily cause uncertainty in the public. For the purpose of this exercise, I am assuming the existence of 20 al Qaeda cells consisting of five men each which are already infiltrated and existing within the US borders. I pulled this figure out of my ass but considering we know for a fact that there were four al Qaeda cells in operation on 9/11 (the four planes that were hijacked) and it is suspected that there were several other cells which aborted their 9/11 mission, so I feel pretty comfortable with then number given that al Qaeda has had nearly three years to prepare. For my scenario day one is the first of July, in looking over the calendar for the next few months, the idea of bringing the country to its knees on/around Independence Day was far too rich a symbolism for me to resist
Thursday, July 1st, 2004:
The first wave of attacks would consist of four simultaneous or nearly simultaneous Madrid style bombings of Subways/Mass transit during the morning rush hour. Each of the five men in a particular cell would strap explosives to their body much like a Palestinian suicide bomber, at 7:30am EDT (or whatever peak rush hour is these days) they would then position themselves with the crowds of commuter traffic waiting for the subway train. Each man would be given the discretion to determine the exact time of detonation, preferably with a large crowd or a train stopped at the platform, but no longer than five minutes from the established time. One cell in each of Boston, New York, Washington DC, and Atlanta would be set to detonate on the same morning. A cell would be on standby to repeat the process an hour later in Chicago if the L had not been evacuated / locked down. The Chicago cell operation is a target of opportunity, if it can be successful it will keep everyone guessing and wondering where the next strike will be but the effect of twenty roughly simultaneously suicide bombers on the east coast seaboard and potentially another five in Chicago would set the nation reeling.
Number of cells remaining: 15 or 16 depending on Chicago.
Friday, July 2nd, 2004:
Cells activated for today will form assault teams, modeled after the recent attacks at Khobar. Each cell would select an upscale suburban mall; they would divide into three groups, two pairs and an odd man out. Each pair of men would enter from opposing ends of the malls and slowly work their way to the middle herding the fleeing people towards the middle of the mall. The odd man out would take up a position on the most likely approach to the mall for emergency vehicles. His target is the first ambulances to arrive on the scene, the idea being to maximize the "horror zone" between when people are wounded and when they start receiving treatment. The goal here is to embed in the American psyche the image of hundreds of people bleeding and suffering with help unable to reach them. All assault teams will be coordinated to begin operations at precisely 8:30pm EDT or thirty seven hours after onset of hostilities. The cities to be targeted are Hartford CT, Raleigh NC, Little Rock AR, Birmingham AL, Nashville TN and if the Chicago team did not attack the first day, it will strike in Cleveland Ohio.
Number of cells remaining: 11
Saturday, July 3rd, 2004:
Psychological ops day: No assaults scheduled for today, instead cell leaders will call predetermined public locations around the country issuing bomb threats in medium and large cities. The idea here is to keep building the psychological pressure, after two days of attacks, the public will be terrified reports of threats will keep that fear pumping. It will serve the dual purpose of wearing down the police forces around the country, by running them all over the place on wild goose chases. It is important to keep the pressure on.
Number of cells remaining: 11
Sunday, July 4th, 2004:
Each cell activated for today will divide itself into four groups, an assault group of two men and three suicide bomb group of a single man each. Each of the bombers will travel to predetermined small/medium size churches 50-100 people and detonate during service. The assault team will proceed to a pre-selected larger church 100-200 people and proceed to terminate as many people as possible. Attacks will be timed for approximately 11am (or whenever most churches are in session).
The cities to be targeted are Oklahoma City OK, Kansas City MO, Omaha NE, Albuquerque NM, Houston TX, Colorado Springs CO.
[ok so yeah, even I couldnt resist tagging Bush's hometown]
Number of cells remaining: 4
Monday, July 5th, 2004:
Silence
Tuesday, July 6th, 2004
Silence
Wednesday, July 7th, 2004
Silence
Number of cells remaining: 4
Thursday, July 8th, 2004
Each cell activated today will split into two delivery groups. Each delivery group will drive a van or truck loaded with explosives into a predetermined downtown office building and detonate the explosives, ala Oklahoma City.
The cities to be targeted are: Los Angeles CA, San Francisco CA, Portland OR, Seattle WA.
Operation complete.
The reason for three days of silence is to give people a break, after the combined destruction of the weekend you have pretty much reached the maximum psychological impact, after that you want to let everything that has happened soak in some. So you give them three days to rest and recover, to begin burying their dead and start to feel like it is over, in the past, then boom, again on Thursday four cities get hit big, just like the week before, oh shit not again.
You will notice that it spreads out from east coast to west coast, this is to give a rolling sensation and a sense of inevitability, the people on the east coast will still be in shock from what happened to them but the people on the west coast will be in abject horror as they watch this wave of death and destruction roll across the country towards them. The other benefit of starting in the east coast is that it gives more of the country more of the day to freak out and react to media reports. The primary object of this exercise is to get people clamouring to give away their freedom in exchange for even the illusion of saftety and asking for the authorities to declare martial law on a national level. [i.e. to show the world the cowering and quaking face of america]
Regionalizing it also has the benefit of making it easier to synchronize your attacks for the most effective timing. It is highly important that no more than fifteen minutes seperates the lanch of the first and last attacks on any given day. The choice of targets and even to some extent the areas of the country targeted will guarantee tactical suprise. For example, on July 4th, you want to hit all the churches at roughly the same time because such targets are easily evacuated, you have generally 15-30 minutes before news of an attack becomes widespread, the time it takes to travel from those who are watching the media to those who are doing other things, like being in church.
Not that we have the manpower to declare and secure the country under martial law, the Army has roughly half a million men at its disposal, [the Marines have another ~200k or so] most of which already quite busy in other parts of the world, in places like Iraq and Afganistan. Even using the national guard and militarizing the local police forces, we would be hard pressed even to secure the state capitols and/or primary cities, and any attempt to do so would require a rapid recall of our troops overseas.
Neither our troops nor our civilians are trained for such a situation; To operate in an environment of American troops on the streets of American cities, pointing their ubiquitous M-16 rifles at American citizens. Conflict between the armed troops and armed populace is innevitable, and when American soldiers are killing American Citizens on American Streets, it is terror that has won the war on us.
Thoughts, Questions, Comments, Suggestions?
[Sources include: BBC, CNN, Reuters, and Stratfor]
In the time since 9/11 we have become complacent with the many "false starts" of the terror warning/alert system. However in recent months, a much broader range of intelligence has not only reinforced al Qaeda's commitment to carrying out strikes within the US borders but increasingly shown signs that they intend to do so within the next few months. I believe we will see several attempted strikes (which may or may not be successful) in the US before November's election, with the goal of influencing the election. I have seen and heard many arguments which debate whether Bush would be helped by or sunk by a terrorist attack in the run up to the election. I believe it will depend primarily on the severity of the attacks. I think another 9/11 scale attack would likely sink Bush, but smaller more targeted attacks would aid him as the American public tends to fly their most patriotic colors when we are being attacked. The American public has in the past 33 months become accustomed to the danger of attacks in so called primary target areas like New York, DC, and L.A, so if the attacks were limited to our first tier cities and fairly limited in scope, it would not shake the average American's faith in their own security a great deal. It is precisely that faith which al Qaeda desires to shake and if they were successful in doing so, it would hurt Bush tremendously in the election.
Historically Al Qaeda has shown a lack of understanding of the American mentality, and a predisposition towards attacks on prestige targets. They tend to focus their efforts on the international symbols of American power (for example the Pentagon and the World Trade Center). In the past, they have failed to demonstrate an understanding that attacking so called prestige targets wounds our pride and shock us but in the end tends to anger us rather than shatter our faith and our will to fight. The attacks on our Military, like the USS Cole, similarly shocked us, but did little to shake our faith in our own strength and security; rather it was piled on top of the already substantial evidence that the Middle East is an ugly and dangerous place.
This however has already started to change, the Madrid attack demonstrates that al Qaeda's sophisticated ability to plan and coordinate complex and effective strategies to attack has not been significantly diminished and their willingness to direct large scale operations at non-prestige targets. Since Madrid, al Qaeda's efforts have been increasingly focused on smaller more precise attacks. The recent attacks in Saudi Arabia on the residential compounds of western consultant demonstrate al Qaeda's willingness to alter their methods of operation and a very high level of sophistication and understanding of the workings and weakness' of Saudi society. Foreign consultants, primarily from Western Europe and the United States constitute the "brain trust" of Saudi Aramco (the Saudi national oil company) that is needed to keep the Saudi oil system pumping out the millions of barrels of crude oil on which the world depends. In attacking the compounds of Westerners, al Qaeda avoids a public backlash which would result from attacking Aramco infrastructure directly.
"... al-Muqrin (al Qaeda's local military commander, Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin) is well aware of the average Saudi's attachment to the country's oil. Attacking oil assets also attacks the Saudi gravy train -- oil is the source of more than 90 percent of Saudi Arabia's export revenues -- which would elicit a far stronger reaction from the ruling House of Saud and the general population than attacks on resident "infidels." Saudi sentiment embraces the oil complex as the property of the people, not simply the House of Saud's feeding trough. Attacking energy assets would threaten to dull al Qaeda's reputation locally, just as the Nov. 9, 2003, as did the attack against Riyadh's al-Muhaya residential compound. That attack targeted predominately Arab Muslims who happened to work with Western expatriates, and not the expatriates themselves. In contrast, attacking expatriates appears to be broadly popular with the Saudi population. Stratfor sources on both sides of the issue within the kingdom indicate that there is little love lost between the expatriates and the government, which has never made great efforts to integrate the expatriates or make them feel welcome or secure. There is even less of a connection between Saudi citizens and the expatriates, who live and work in heavily guarded compounds." - Peter Zeihan - STRATFOR Briefing - June 8, 2004
Al Qaeda's specific targeting of Western expatriate workers not only strikes directly at the brain stem of Aramco but increases al Qaeda's popular appeal within Saudi Arabia. In the most recent attacks, al Qaeda gunmen targeted western expatriates while sparing the lives of those from other parts of the world, even taking the time to discern a persons origins (at least on two instances through verbal exchanges). This also demonstrates an amount of discipline and motivation among the members of their assault teams and the experience to remain calm while carrying out a mission and refraining from indiscriminate killings. The inability, and even perhaps unwillingness of the Saudi government to take effective measures to protect Aramco's expatriate workers, for example refusing to allow armed private security forces to be imported to guard the compounds, will cause many of these workers to question if even their generous salaries are worth the risk. Attempts to get the US government to pressure the Saudis has been ineffective, at security briefings in the U.S. Embassy, officials are instead telling the expatriates that they "should get the [expletive deleted] out of here." The exodus of western workers which will most likely result from this will have a profound impact on oil production and in the long run cripple Aramco's ability to sustain its current production levels, let alone allow the Saudis to continue be OPEC's swing producer.
Al Qaeda has already announced its intention to start targeting Western corporations. In an audiotape message attributed to Osama bin Laden and broadcast on April 15th by Al Arabiya, al Qaeda threatened western multinationals with attack and singled out Halliburton in particular. A May 29th statement by al-Muqrin claimed that the May 27th attacks in Khobar were linked, at least in part, to an association with Halliburton. These warnings, along with the attacks in Madrid & Saudi Arabia, have led many experts and analysts to predict attacks on multinational corporations both in the US and Abroad and attacks on public transit and chemical storage facilities. These same analysts predict that the attacks will be smaller and more precise in nature, more resembling the recent attacks in Saudi, than a 9/11 scale attack. Suicide bombings and abductions of employees, tactics we have seen used in Iraq, also can not be ruled out. But again with such attacks, as well as other politically minded attacks such as an attack in Bush's home town of Houston, Texas, al Qaeda would missing the pulse of American life. An attack on Halliburton, would not only qualify as I mentioned before as a target which the American public is mentally prepared for, but I can imagine that in the eyes of many left-leaning liberals it may even be perceived, a well deserved blow in response to the corruption and misdealing of a scurrilous multinational company. I expect that as al Qaeda succeeds in carrying out attacks within the US and is able to gauge our response that we can expect to see their understanding of American culture and social perceptions to increase quickly and significantly to a level on par with the sophistication they have shown in Saudi Arabia.
While the horror of 9/11 stunned our nation and was incredibly successful both in a tactical and psychological sense, smaller more targeted attacks, especially focusing on Corporate targets and remote storage facilities will not have nearly the same impact. A Madrid-style attack on the mass transit systems of one or more major cities would have a much greater psychological impact on the nation. We already know that Al Qaeda considered using a strategy of smaller more targeted attacks before the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. However these styles of attack requires significantly more preoperational intelligence and planning to be effective and are far more susceptible to detection by active counter-terrorism security forces, and it is likely that at that time al Qaeda was not operating within the US on the scale and sophistication necessary to effectively leverage that type of strategy. However that is unlikely to be the case today, as on 9/11 al Qaeda demonstrated they had both the resources and the sophistication to carry out highly complex preoperational planning, and effectively exploit weaknesses in our security strategies. It would be foolish to think that the absence of attacks in the United States is the result of complacency or even competency on the part of counter-terrorism and law enforcement, we must consider the more likely possibility that al Qaeda has merely been waiting, watching and planning their next series of moves, and it is my belief that the upcoming election provides both an abundance of targets and a profitable environment to magnify the effect of any such attacks.
The simple fact is that the US is far too large and too free of a country to have any real ability to secure us against small scale terrorist attacks. Israel by comparison has a vastly smaller geographical area (it is slightly smaller than New Jersey) and its citizens are more willing to accept soldiers in the streets and being inconvenienced by security measures and possesses what is undeniably the best counter-terrorism intelligence and security force in the world, and they are still unable to entirely secure their borders and cities against terrorism. It is highly unlikely that American law enforcement is trained; equipped or adequately staffed enough to even come close to mimicking Israel's impressive record of preventing over 90% of attempted terrorist attacks.
Now I will pause here to remind you that I make no claim to prescience, and everything going forward is simply an intellectual exercise on my part, in which I examine our society and the infrastructure of our country from the position of someone wanting to wreak maximum destruction and havoc. You may find this disturbing or unpleasant, but if you have gotten this far you can probably handle it. I will take into account the rough outlines of what we know of al Qaeda's capabilities and allow myself a limited amount of flexibility to account for al Qaeda's demonstrated ability to alter their tactics and methods to their advantage in a particular situation. I am also varying to tactics to maximize the shock effect and to steadily cause uncertainty in the public. For the purpose of this exercise, I am assuming the existence of 20 al Qaeda cells consisting of five men each which are already infiltrated and existing within the US borders. I pulled this figure out of my ass but considering we know for a fact that there were four al Qaeda cells in operation on 9/11 (the four planes that were hijacked) and it is suspected that there were several other cells which aborted their 9/11 mission, so I feel pretty comfortable with then number given that al Qaeda has had nearly three years to prepare. For my scenario day one is the first of July, in looking over the calendar for the next few months, the idea of bringing the country to its knees on/around Independence Day was far too rich a symbolism for me to resist
Thursday, July 1st, 2004:
The first wave of attacks would consist of four simultaneous or nearly simultaneous Madrid style bombings of Subways/Mass transit during the morning rush hour. Each of the five men in a particular cell would strap explosives to their body much like a Palestinian suicide bomber, at 7:30am EDT (or whatever peak rush hour is these days) they would then position themselves with the crowds of commuter traffic waiting for the subway train. Each man would be given the discretion to determine the exact time of detonation, preferably with a large crowd or a train stopped at the platform, but no longer than five minutes from the established time. One cell in each of Boston, New York, Washington DC, and Atlanta would be set to detonate on the same morning. A cell would be on standby to repeat the process an hour later in Chicago if the L had not been evacuated / locked down. The Chicago cell operation is a target of opportunity, if it can be successful it will keep everyone guessing and wondering where the next strike will be but the effect of twenty roughly simultaneously suicide bombers on the east coast seaboard and potentially another five in Chicago would set the nation reeling.
Number of cells remaining: 15 or 16 depending on Chicago.
Friday, July 2nd, 2004:
Cells activated for today will form assault teams, modeled after the recent attacks at Khobar. Each cell would select an upscale suburban mall; they would divide into three groups, two pairs and an odd man out. Each pair of men would enter from opposing ends of the malls and slowly work their way to the middle herding the fleeing people towards the middle of the mall. The odd man out would take up a position on the most likely approach to the mall for emergency vehicles. His target is the first ambulances to arrive on the scene, the idea being to maximize the "horror zone" between when people are wounded and when they start receiving treatment. The goal here is to embed in the American psyche the image of hundreds of people bleeding and suffering with help unable to reach them. All assault teams will be coordinated to begin operations at precisely 8:30pm EDT or thirty seven hours after onset of hostilities. The cities to be targeted are Hartford CT, Raleigh NC, Little Rock AR, Birmingham AL, Nashville TN and if the Chicago team did not attack the first day, it will strike in Cleveland Ohio.
Number of cells remaining: 11
Saturday, July 3rd, 2004:
Psychological ops day: No assaults scheduled for today, instead cell leaders will call predetermined public locations around the country issuing bomb threats in medium and large cities. The idea here is to keep building the psychological pressure, after two days of attacks, the public will be terrified reports of threats will keep that fear pumping. It will serve the dual purpose of wearing down the police forces around the country, by running them all over the place on wild goose chases. It is important to keep the pressure on.
Number of cells remaining: 11
Sunday, July 4th, 2004:
Each cell activated for today will divide itself into four groups, an assault group of two men and three suicide bomb group of a single man each. Each of the bombers will travel to predetermined small/medium size churches 50-100 people and detonate during service. The assault team will proceed to a pre-selected larger church 100-200 people and proceed to terminate as many people as possible. Attacks will be timed for approximately 11am (or whenever most churches are in session).
The cities to be targeted are Oklahoma City OK, Kansas City MO, Omaha NE, Albuquerque NM, Houston TX, Colorado Springs CO.
[ok so yeah, even I couldnt resist tagging Bush's hometown]
Number of cells remaining: 4
Monday, July 5th, 2004:
Silence
Tuesday, July 6th, 2004
Silence
Wednesday, July 7th, 2004
Silence
Number of cells remaining: 4
Thursday, July 8th, 2004
Each cell activated today will split into two delivery groups. Each delivery group will drive a van or truck loaded with explosives into a predetermined downtown office building and detonate the explosives, ala Oklahoma City.
The cities to be targeted are: Los Angeles CA, San Francisco CA, Portland OR, Seattle WA.
Operation complete.
The reason for three days of silence is to give people a break, after the combined destruction of the weekend you have pretty much reached the maximum psychological impact, after that you want to let everything that has happened soak in some. So you give them three days to rest and recover, to begin burying their dead and start to feel like it is over, in the past, then boom, again on Thursday four cities get hit big, just like the week before, oh shit not again.
You will notice that it spreads out from east coast to west coast, this is to give a rolling sensation and a sense of inevitability, the people on the east coast will still be in shock from what happened to them but the people on the west coast will be in abject horror as they watch this wave of death and destruction roll across the country towards them. The other benefit of starting in the east coast is that it gives more of the country more of the day to freak out and react to media reports. The primary object of this exercise is to get people clamouring to give away their freedom in exchange for even the illusion of saftety and asking for the authorities to declare martial law on a national level. [i.e. to show the world the cowering and quaking face of america]
Regionalizing it also has the benefit of making it easier to synchronize your attacks for the most effective timing. It is highly important that no more than fifteen minutes seperates the lanch of the first and last attacks on any given day. The choice of targets and even to some extent the areas of the country targeted will guarantee tactical suprise. For example, on July 4th, you want to hit all the churches at roughly the same time because such targets are easily evacuated, you have generally 15-30 minutes before news of an attack becomes widespread, the time it takes to travel from those who are watching the media to those who are doing other things, like being in church.
Not that we have the manpower to declare and secure the country under martial law, the Army has roughly half a million men at its disposal, [the Marines have another ~200k or so] most of which already quite busy in other parts of the world, in places like Iraq and Afganistan. Even using the national guard and militarizing the local police forces, we would be hard pressed even to secure the state capitols and/or primary cities, and any attempt to do so would require a rapid recall of our troops overseas.
Neither our troops nor our civilians are trained for such a situation; To operate in an environment of American troops on the streets of American cities, pointing their ubiquitous M-16 rifles at American citizens. Conflict between the armed troops and armed populace is innevitable, and when American soldiers are killing American Citizens on American Streets, it is terror that has won the war on us.
Thoughts, Questions, Comments, Suggestions?
[Sources include: BBC, CNN, Reuters, and Stratfor]
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Date: 2004-06-13 05:34 am (UTC)Of course, depending on how they planned it, I for example counted each cell as a one time thing, going for maximum damage in leu of planning for survivability, they could do this much and more with far few men. For example in the last phase only two members from each cell (the actual drivers of the vans) would need to be exposed to potential harm, the other three would be available for future assignments. Additionally if you planned the assault strikes as shock tactics rather than going for maximum numbers, by having your gunmen burst in, spray the crowd and immediately attempt an escape, you would have a much higher chance of most of them getting away, and could make do with far fewer people. The only downside of that is that then your teams would have to travel quickly between one target zone and the next and deploy without much time to reconfirm prior recon, where as in my plan they would already be in place ready to act upon their schedule. Also in such a case, the elimination of one team in an earlier stage would prevent the later stages of attacks that team was scheduled to take out, which would defeat the purpose to a certain degree as it would dampen the psychological sense of impotence and innevitability.
I avoided bio/chem and so called dirty weapons primarily because they added a level of difficulty without providing much in the way of additional destruction.
the overall theory I was working with was small and random, simple styled attacks that could be easily done anywhere by anyone. It was more important in my line of thinking to make it seem like it could happen to anyone, the next time you happened to turn around than actual kill numbers.
What makes them larger scale events is not the tactics but the multiplication effect of coordinated attacks.
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Date: 2004-06-13 09:44 am (UTC)