[milkncookies]

I'll take a SWAG at that tmp02. This is not my opinion, but others have a strong conviction that AQ and related terrorist groups are simply "front" organizations for a larger, much more malicious state(s) sponsorship. These individuals argue that by staging numerous "small scale" attacks over an extended period of time by AQ and related groups "we" (i.e. general population, government ) will be convinced that when the big blow(s) comes, there will be no question in our minds as to who carried it out. At that point how do we respond? Who can we go after if in fact there is no apparent country or government behind it?

[milkncookies]

Syria and Iran sign military pact. DEBKAfile Reveals: Iran promises transfer of advanced Shihab-3 technology and additional investment in Syria’s long range missile and artillery industry. More....

[SCR1]

I'd like to add, if we get Bin Laden AND Nuclear weapons are detontated in the CONUS, who do we Blame? Who would we retaliate against? We already have troops everywhere.

[milkncookies]

In addition to my SWAG in post #1804, I offer the following quote and it's source:

From Russia With Terror- An interview with Ion Mihai Pacepa, former acting chief of Communist Romania’s espionage service:

"Pacepa: In the early 1970s, the Kremlin established a “socialist division of labor” for persuading the governments of Iraq and Libya to join the terrorist war against the US. KGB chairman Yury Andropov (who would later become the leader of the Soviet Union), told me that either of those two countries could inflict more damage on the Americans than could the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof group and all other terrorist organizations taken together. The governments of those Arab countries, Andropov explained, not only had inexhaustible financial resources (read: oil), but they also had huge intelligence services that were being run by “our razvedka advisers” and could extend their tentacles to every corner of the earth. There was one major danger, though: by raising terrorism to the state level we risked American reprisal. Washington would never dispatch its airplanes and rockets to exterminate the Baader-Meinhof, but it might well deploy them to destroy a terrorist state. We therefore were also tasked to provide those countries secretly with weapons of mass destruction, because Andropov concluded that the Yankees would never attack a country that could retaliate with such deadly weapons."

A good read.