Regarding the "criminal capital" comment, could it be a synonym for "sin city....Las Vegas?"
Umm, I wondered and wanted to sift through Vegas stuff for info.
I dunno Vel. Still seems to me like a reference to D.C. These are political minded animals and most everything has that connection, with them. Bears watching, don't you think?
DC makes the most sense. Las Vegas and Dallas can be argued.
The target selection depends on who the top decision makers are/were for this operation. I am not entirely convinced that UBL and Zawahiri are factors any longer. Whether they are hiding, killed, or captured, they are largely isolated. and incapable of communication of the quality or quantity necessary to plan, organize, and direct an operation larger than 9/11. Madrid and Amman do not seem to have their fingerprints, it seems to be Zarqawi. He seems to have "power of attorney".
So you have to crawl in his head (and whoever else is making these calls). Is the goal of the operation (primarily) a psychological effect (mass casualty), strategic effect (economic or military disruption), or symbolic effect (destroying national leaders or monuments)?
I don't think we know what the AQ/Jihadist leadership structure is and the extent of their relation to states. I maintain that input if not control of target selection will come from the state sponsor(s) and the target options have been studied for years. (The post on last weekend's Basij conference was one of the most relevant of the 40K+ posts so far.) Target selection in Iraq since 8/07/03 exhibits "intelligent design" and is suggestive of future targeting here (decapitation). That is why DC is big.
I am not going to run down potential targets and their impacts (obviously). I don't have any info not available on the net, but it is not productive to start valuing alternative targets here at home. I don't want to go there. But the names of the cities (as opposed to the merits of one over another) have been speculated since 9/11. These threads began with the NYC/DC/LA threat. That threat remains relevant and in force. Las Vegas has come up in the news over the past couple years. Chicago was supposedly part of the 9/11 plan they scrapped because UBL thought it was too ambitious. They revisit targets. Texas targets (Houston or Dallas) seem logical from several vantage points. (Stratfor has an article predicting Houston that was linked last week)
Multiple targets seem the deal. So it is not "either-or".
UBL/Zawahiri/Saddam were more cautious. I think with the top of the axis "decapitated", new, younger, more reckless folks are coming to the fore (and silent, stronger axis partners) . 9/11 was psychological (trying for tens of thousands of casualties in the towers)and symbolic (killing national executive and legislative leadership and going after prominent physical targets of importance to both the American and Islamic target audience). It wasn't strategic.
It is cold, but decapitation in a democratic country is less of an issue than in a dictatorial country as democracies can more effectively, efficiently, and legitimately reconstitute a national leadership than one man or one ruling party/class on top of a pyramid. When Iraq was effectively decapitated (no one could find Saddam and many thought him dead), the entire government and military fell apart. We have a constitution (a real one that is actually followed and has legitimacy) and have preset lines of succession that have *legitimacy* (key word). You can have preset lines of succession on the other side, but no guarantee they will be followed.
Target selection might be different if a state or states are behind this. They would pressure the jihadis to go for strategic targets. Jihadis want symbolic and psychological targets (big body counts). States have more at risk and have different objectives. The Japanese were not interested in running up a body count, they just wanted the Pacific Fleet taken out of commission.
So to answer the question of what cities are most in danger you have to first assess how much value they have from each of these three perspectives, figure out who is making the operational and strategic decisions on their side and crawl in their head(s), and then resolve the decade-long debate as to what role, if any, nations have in sponsoring or even directing groups like AQ. And if they have a meaningful role to this day, how much "say" do they have as to how the operation goes down?
Figure all that out and you can predict where the hit will be. But if we still cannot figure out if Qaeda had anything to do with Iraq with 9/11, I am pessimitic that we could even get close to answering these more nebulous questions.