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How do we know that the terrorists haven't been engaged in disruptive activities along the lines you suggest? The government wouldn't announce it or admit it in any way (even if they were aware of it, which is doubtful). Acknowledging terror attacks could cause a decline in our markets and our economy; plus, the attacks would be perceived by many as terrorist successes. Thus it may be good strategy to deny terrorist acts when one can.

This extends even to full-fledged terrorist actions, which will often be denied if possible, rather than acknowledge a terrorist success. With the AA 587 crash investigation, for example, it's likely that the U.S. government would say exactly the same things whether it were an accident or sabotage, unless the sabotage were so obvious that it couldn't be denied. (I don't pretend to know whether it was an accident or not, and I'm not accusing the government of lying. It may have been an accident, just as they say. My point is that it's difficult for us to tell, since the government would be saying the same thing either way.) The same thing applies to the Toulouse petrochemical plant explosion and the French government.

I think you have put your finger on something here. there was a train derailment in London where some fake track workers were spotted on a security camera. And there were some suspicious rail accidents in the U.S., too. But, of course, our media goes baa baa baa into the sheep pen and never even reports on the astronomical coincidence of how the 9/11 hijackers crossed paths with some anthrax victims in Florida. Not every attack will be spectactular.

How do we know that the terrorists haven't been engaged in disruptive activities along the lines you suggest? The government wouldn't announce it or admit it in any way (even if they were aware of it, which is doubtful). Acknowledging terror attacks could cause a decline in our markets and our economy; plus, the attacks would be perceived by many as terrorist successes. Thus it may be good strategy to deny terrorist acts when one can.

I thought about that too. But if I were the terrorists I would simply make my announcements to the media who would be much more reliable to publish it than the gov't.

The whole sabotage scheme I mentioned wouldn't in and of itself actually cause that much damage. It would be the diversion of resources (police,National Guard, emergency teams, power line crews etc) and just the general feeling of unease, I believe, that would be the main rewards for such things. I mean let's face it, Nature does more destruction on a weekly basis than "monkey wrenching" ever could.

But to stretch the response/security services would have the knock on effect of perhaps opening up "holes" in other places where resources were stretched too thin to cover and if a system/people are on a constant "high alert" it will eventually suffer from battle fatigue.

At any rate, the point of my post was I don't believe al Qaeda is as all pervasive and powerful as we are led to believe sometimes or they're just plain stupid- I tend to think it's a little bit of both. It's like that business about suicide bombers being an eventuality that "we'll just have to face" within our own borders. That served to fan flames of fear, but as one Freeper pointed out- "Where are they? Why are they waiting? If they really wanted to they would have done it by now..."

Another point is, perhaps the whole point to 9/11 wasn't to injure the USA as the end goal they were shooting for. Many pundits figured bin Laden was trying to rally radicals around his cause and he perpetrated these attacks as a way of demonstrating his power to those he wished to unite under his vision. I'm speculating here but it would seem that bin Laden has to be intelligent enough to see that going to war with the USA (even if all of Islam were united in this cause) would be a losing proposition for his people in the long run.

Perhaps his end goal is to gain power in Saudi Arabia and impose his version of what a good Muslim nation should be and also to gain control of the oil and raise its price to force the USA and the West at large to the negotiating table. If he could be seen to stand up to the Great Satan and become a leader on the world scene that we were forced to deal with (thereby giving him legitmacy- think Arafat), perhaps he would even stand a chance at uniting the Arab/Islamic world at large under his command- giving him effective control of a big chunk of the world's population.

Then again, regardless of how intelligent/unintelligent the man is, living that radical outlaw life in Afghanistan no doubt drove him insane enough to think that he could actually bring the US to its knees. He's probably just as bent on wanton destruction as all the other fanatics out there without any thought to long term plans. But he does seem to have a long term plan and the very fact that al Qaeda never officially claims responsibility (the way terrorists have in the past) is quite a niggling point. What good does it do not to claim responsibility? It's puzzling.