I keep thinking they really bungled this. If you look at the damage-—yes, a few deaths, many horrible manglings. But this isn’t the “bang for the buck” that the terrorists want. They want thousands dead at a time. So it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this was a hastily drawn-up plan b.
It could also be step 1 in a multistep plan.
They learned a lot about how the authorities respond. I could have been much worse.
The object is chaos and terror. They kept an iconic American city on virtual lockdown for five straight days. All for the price of some kitchenware and a couple of expendable dupes.
I dunno, Boston effectively shut down for a few days, estimates are billions in lost economic activity, scores of people with lifelong injuries, four dead. And it cost them a couple of thousand bucks worth of materials and only two young inexperienced men (so far at least).
Frankly, I'm appalled by the bang they got for their buck. We have to do better. The clues were there, the Russians warned us about the older brother. We were asleep.