Terrorists took practice runs with planes too.
Talk about terror? How would middle America react to such an act...if, say, 30 busses were boarded and the worst possible scenario played out?
How about 5 man teams hitting 30 shopping malls?
You can BET this is in the Iranian playbook.
I believe you nailed the next attack. A coordinated attack with small arms or bombs in schools, sporting events, or malls. These attacks could kill thousands.
They can't board schoolbuses with thinking bus drivers.
I personally think if they did that we would likely turn several countries to glass and the survivors would have to go back to the stone age.
That doesn't mean I think they wouldn't do it if they can.
Beslan. I agree. Dry run.
Granted, I trust none of these "people".
In about two tenths of one second, Middle America would cease being squeamish about the ethics of things like internment camps. The conventional hindsight version of how horribly unjust the American-Japanese Internment camps were in WWII would go RIGHT OUT THE WINDOW. You'd see foreign-born and probably even American-born Middle Easterners hustled off to internment camps so fast it would make your head spin. And it would be the right thing to do.
Some important things to remember about those Japanese camps:
1. The bigger injustice by far was that wonderfully productive and loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry had their private farms and homes confiscated and sold to the highest bidder. The practice was immoral then, and would be immoral today if we were to confiscate the internment camp inmates' businesses and property and sell them.
2. World War II generation folks have told me that Japanese-Americans were put into the camps as much for their own protection -- i.e., to keep from being hurt or killed by angry American citizens. You can bet your ass that it would most certainly be the case if ME terrorists in America killed kids on school busses and blew up shopping malls.
I am of the strong belief that Middle Easternern Islamic cultures very seriously underestimate how Americans would react to something like this. They think Americans would be soft, push-overs. They are DEAD WRONG and would find out fast.