[Steve_Seattle]

"strategically significant"

The bombing on an embassy or a military barracks would not be "strategically significant." Your "nuke" reference is more in the line of what I would call significant. These things come to mind:

1. Some kind of EMP attack or other attack which disables a significant part of the power grid.
2. A viral attack on the Internet.
3. An attack - dirty nuke, chemical, whatever - on a major capital or major city that causes significant casualties and/or mid- to long-term disruption of everyday activities.
4. Multiple conventional bomb or suicide-bomb attacks on major cities that lead to dozens or hundreds of casualties.
5. Multiple suicide bomb attacks on airliners causing hundreds of deaths.
6. An attack on a major monument or tourist attraction - Eifel Tower, Disneyland, etc.
7. The assassination of one or more Western leaders, or a devastating attack on the central governmental offices of a Western power, e.g., US Capitol Building.
8. The takeover of a mid-Eastern government such as Saudi Arabia.

Those are the kinds of things I would consider "big" or "strategically significant."

[PghBaldy]

Good points. Whoever said it was “strategically significant?” Some unnamed official... I agree with you that an Embassy, per se, would not fit into that category, but who knows if said source even knows what the phrase means?

[Paul R.]

Good points, though with a couple caveats:

4) I think either it’d have to be several successful attacks in the U.S., or a high casualty count overseas (500+ in Europe, 1000+ in the Middle East) to count as
strategically significant.)

5) Even given TSA and foreign agencies’ not uncommon slip ups, this seems unlikely. AQ might get a couple planes out of a couple dozen attempts, but not more than that. Downing planes originating from areas with poor security has less impact per incident - most Americans are not going to panic if a flight originating from, say, Cairo is downed. Several airliners downed in the U.S. or Europe by ManPads would qualify, though.

6) If “successful”, ie., many casualties, AQ actually holds a good part of the location for several hours, etc.

I would add a “9”, multiple & major successful attacks on industrial, especially oil related, targets.

The above are quibbles, of course. My guess is that there is a great deal of misdirection from both our gov’t and AQ, going on here: AQ aimed at NSA, etc., and our gov’t at US.