I thought about this today before you posted here, and came to the conclusion that position may be 180-degrees incorrect.
Perhaps Usama bin Laden wouldn't have done this if he weren't already armed with nuclear weapons of some sort. Being precious to his cause, he wouldn't risk losing one without being sure to set it off no matter what cost. He's isn't a villain who's afraid of expending assets, you understand.
The safest position might be to use it against US troops sent to respond to an undeniable act of war and use it against them on his own turf. He's got no real love for Afghanistan, he just hangs his turban there. He's a Saudi, and he's from where the holiest site in Islam is found. What significance has Afghanistan got? By the time the US troops arrive, he'd already have left the country after seeing to it that the plan was staged perfectly.
Maybe he'd even be able to use Afghanistani military assets as part of the attack, if the stories about bin Laden being a supreme force commander of the Taliban militia are correct. His men aren't just soldiers, they're fanatics.
Who seriously believes the Taliban claim that they've detained bin Laden under 'house arrest' are true? It's just buying time as many see it.
Was the attack yesterday the execution of his grandest plan, or is it a preliminary set-up?
The shortest question to ask yourself is this: 'Would Osama Bin Laden have acted in such a spectacular manner on 9-11-2001 if he didn't have an ace up his sleeve?'.
He set out to destroy the White House, Air Force One, the Pentagon, and the biggest foreign symbol of Western finance -- the World Trade Center.
Was that the limit of his scheme? What could he possibly do for an encore? He knows this means inviting cataclysm.
It's either that, or you subscribe to the notion that bin Laden's has come to the conclusion that his efforts to secure and deliver a nuke will never see the light of day as long as he's alive (and dying of cancer supposedly), so he might as well just to send the terror pilots out now to execute their insidious plans.
Which makes more sense?
The report in The Times today of components for a nuclear weapon reaching bin Laden via Pakistan suggests this worst fear in the war on terror may have been realised. If proven, it would be “a five-star disaster for the world”, one of America’s leading non-proliferation experts said last night.
It would also focus international attention on two Pakistani nuclear scientists arrested this week, and on an alleged Pakistani intelligence agent whom US undercover agents heard say he wanted to “kill all Americans”. (Our allies?)
Pakistan has between 30 and 120 nuclear weapons, built with components smuggled from Germany and The Netherlands in the 1980s.
President Musharraf has declined US offers of increased “perimeter security” for his research reactors and nuclear storage sites, insisting they are completely safe, but other sources tell a different story.
The Pakistani connection to bin Laden’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons came to the FBI’s attention two years ago. Raja Ghulam Abbas, linked by the US to both bin Laden and Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency, met an FBI informer for lunch at a Manhattan restaurant within view of the World Trade Centre, and told him he wanted the twin towers “reduced to rubble.”