If taking down the WTC and hitting the Pentagon made Bin Laden a hero in the Islamic world, imagine what he'd be if he nuked a 100 US cities? Decapitating our govt. and economy before anyone in the US knew what hit them and leaving no one left to figure out who to retaliate against? It would have been the greatest Islamic victory in history.
Wrong. They decided that flying hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center towers would be like Baby Bear's soup: not too hot, not too cold, but juuust right.
If taking down the WTC and hitting the Pentagon made Bin Laden a hero in the Islamic world, imagine what he'd be if he nuked a 100 US cities? Decapitating our govt. and economy before anyone in the US knew what hit them and leaving no one left to figure out who to retaliate against? It would have been the greatest Islamic victory in history.
It would also have mobilized all American citizens and provoked a World War II-level response from a country massively capable of giving such a response -- when push comes to shove. There would be NO Americans taking the position of Daschle & the various other liberal jackasses in that case. There would be NO debate. There would only be massive American mobilization, and massive American action.
They wanted a big, flamboyant attack that would rally Muslims to their side, provide support for larger attacks to be made later on, and hopefully result in the fall of governments in the Muslim world to radical Islam. But not SO big as to push things immediately "out of control."
In fact, the two al-Qaeda leaders interviewed recently by al-Jazeera specifically stated that originally the idea had been to hit nuke plants with the jetliners -- but they backed off from an attack involving nuclear elements specifically because they didn't want things to get "out of control."