"You decide: Kill a lot of Americans for propaganda value or go for the "kill" shot? If they can't hope to sustain guerilla operations long enough to take advantage of chaotic conditions (conditions caused by what?) then what is so "special" about this operation?"
WMD
"We won't launch any nukes of our own, we won't risk irradiating the oil fields or their vital iol infrastructure. Therefore our "tot" involvement in the ME (short term) may be what they are hoping for to force the rest of that community of nations into joining into global Jihad and try taking out Israel as well."
At some level of civilian casualties, our response will lapse into "irrationality". I am not saying what *should happen* only what *could happen*. I don't think either we nor they understand how badly this could escalate. Collateral damage at some point (infrastructure or more important enemy civilians) would make any victory pyrhhic.
I think you hit their motivations on the head. They are hijacking the region and willing to sacrifice their own innocent civilians if they can set off a global jihad by provoking an "insanely" violent reaction from us with WMD mass casualties.
The only way to pull the 99.9% (literally) of the Muslim world that is not actively fighting jihad (.1% of the over one billion Muslims equates to over one million fighters, and that is still ten times the actual number) is to provoke the enemy (us) to do something so unprecedentedly violent that it validates their ideology (that we indeed are bent on a holy war and conquest of the Mideast).
The only way to bait us into doing something horrific enough the bring the entire Islamic world off the sidelines is to force us to fight their type of war (slaughtering civilians). A WMD-war does not permit precision targeting and most of the damage (if not all) is collateral.
This is all about WMD. It is their Holy Grail.
Al-Qaeda threats could be smokescreen for attack plans: experts
PARIS : The latest threats purportedly issued by Al-Qaeda must be taken seriously because they may be a diversionary smokescreen in preparation for a major attack on a western target, anti-terorrism specialists have warned.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/99767/1/.html
You should create an about page here, you sound very knowledgable