Ok I'm not sure which link it was I clicked on but it was from this thread posted sometime yesterday. It was an islamic website in complete arabic but what caught my eye was a picture of the Pope & a map.
If you are anyone cares to respond about this what are your thoughts on the Pope being the target of the assassination?
I didn't see the link. If you find it let me know.
The Pope is a possible target. It has come up before.
I think the focus for them right now is the American election and the Israeli/Palestinian issue with Iraq coming up a close third with tentative January elections and a possible all-out assault on Fallujah.
But just because these are the front-burner issues at the moment does not mean other targets will not emerge in the rapidly changing situation (Musharraf, Mubarak, King Hussein, Saudi royals, Allawi, Karzai, etc). On 9/11 they had prefered targets and prefered times, but they were flexible and exploited opportunities. They have a target list. Like UBL stated, "Sweden" is not on it. (But I thought they were at one point, or maybe it was Norway). Not all targets or all times are created equal. There are "high value targets" (value in quality as well as quantity) and "high value times". Also, they are not omnipresent, omniscient, or omnipotent. They have to choose their battles.
The Pope is near the top of the list even though right now the focus seems to be elsewhere.
The value of him as a target for them is to give credence to their "spin" that this is a war of civilizations (that Islam is being attacked by a Jewish-Christian conspiracy)as an attack on the Pope will inflame over a billion Catholics worldwide and will create new opportunities for them to escalate the global struggle.
Same reason why body counts and WMD are the holy grail for them. It massively escalates the global struggle and thereby validates their ideology of hate and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It is a psychological war/political-media campaign targeting a global audience of both Christians and Muslims. I think the strategy is shrewd as they are trying to peel off coalition democracies (Spain, Philippines, etc)and split the U.S. from within in order to attain objectives with a carrot and stick approach.
(eg. "Vote for Bush and you are voting for war against us and attacks against your state. Vote against Bush and you are voting for peace and a respite from violence.")
Same as the 90-day truce in Europe.
I am not sure going after the Pope at this moment serves their purposes. They are trying to create division both in America and the Western world as a whole. Killing the Pope would offend and incite many Christians, not just Catholics. That would be hard to explain. They are trying to create a temporary "breathing space" for themselves by giving us a "way out" (like they did the Spanish, Italians, Filipinos, etc) so they can focus on attaining their regional objectives and consolidating "the base" for further stages of global jihad.
They need to keep Europe divided not only to keep them from helping us stabilize Iraq but also so they do not intervene when Israel's number comes up. Same message to us in the UBL video. They want us to believe that if we just left the region, surrendered the fight, and rendered the emerging democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan, our moderate allies such as Egypt and Jordan, and above all, Israel to their tender mercies, then they would leave us alone. . . .
. . .until they had consolidated the regional base in a nuclear-armed Caliphate stretching from Africa to the Subcontinent, and then continued the call to subdue the rest of the world in the name of Islam. Their appeals to the American people are nothing but a siren song.
But take nothing for granted as they are opportunistic and their command and control cannot be as functional as it was pre-9/11. Lots of loose cannons out there could start freelancing if the global situation becomes chaotic. . .
Or if we have a sudden break and take their top leadership out of the equation, causing the rest of the terror networks to start flailing around like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off.