Try, Try Again - The

Try, Try Again - The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center were a second attempt (after the 1993 attempt which failed to topple one tower into the other only through blind luck, as it turns out).

The attack on the USS Cole was also a repeat of an attempt, months earlier, at a nearly identical strike on the USS The Sullivans.

And as this WaPo article makes clear, many in the higher ranks of our Homeland Security apparatus think Al Quaeda's tenacity bodes ill for Washington DC, especially the White House.

In an interview conducted in June but broadcast in September by the satellite television network al-Jazeera, al Qaeda operative Ramzi Binalshibh said United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, had been aimed at Congress.

U.S. analysts lean to the view that Binalshibh was lying. Four officials said the better evidence points to the White House as the target.

The article quotes retired Army Gen. Wayne A. Downing, who was President Bush's deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism until this past July.

"These guys continue to go back after targets they have tried to get before," Downing said. "That's why I expect they're going to go back to Washington and why I expect they're going to go back to New York, both because of the symbolic impact of those attacks and the economic effect."

The strongest expression of that view came in very personal terms from a participant in efforts against al Qaeda whose office is adjacent to Pennsylvania Avenue.

"They are going to kill the White House," the official said. "I have really begun to ask myself whether I want to continue to get up every day and come to work on this block."

The article also delves into the failure (so far) of attempts to build a concentric, anti-nuke detection barrier around the District.

Chilling stuff. Read it.

(Via Smart Genes)

Posted by Mitch at December 26, 2002 01:12 PM