placemark
Assassination, the final sign that was to trigger the next round of AQ attacks. It started that way in 2001, with the death of the anti-Taliban warlord, it has been announced over the past couple of years by AQ mouthpieces. My question is “who would be the most vulnerable and high enough profile?”
The following is my speculation. One answer - Musharraf of Pakistan. I believe he knows it as well as the administration. It is likely that his current aggressive posture against the Waristan tribal leaders and radical imans is targeted to throw the assassination attempt off. His intelligence is good and he probably caught wind of the soon to be completed plot during the standoff. Clearly the jihadists have wanted him dead for a long time, so why act now? Because he showed weakness in agreeing to the truce with the tribal leaders, allowing the radicals to reinforce themselves to the point of openly challenging him. This same weakness has allowed AQ to reconstitute to a degree in Pakistani training camps - safe from US forces. Now that they are ready to strike again, they want to rid themselves of Musharraf so that there will be no Pakistani response to the attacks as the country’s leadership would be in chaos or possibly under the control of jihadists. This is a slightly similar plot to the anti-Taliban warlord - permit Taliban/AQ consolidation of Afghanistan to buffer them from the US response (which they grossly under judged). This time they are counting on a larger jihadist influenced public base for protection and buffering after the next attack, assuming that the US will be tied up elsewhere (which could well be the case if Iran/Syria/Hamas/Hezbolla use a chaos following a massive 9/11 level event to strike Israel).
My gut says “watch Musharraf”.