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| Khalid Shaikh Mohammed: Chicago and LA were next after 9/11 | |
| 2004-03-30 | |
| By Paul Martin, Washington Times. EFL A bit behind the curve, are we? I guess it adds detail to last year's story... Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al Qaeda’s purported operations chief, has told U.S. interrogators that the group had been planning attacks on the Library Tower in Los Angeles and the Sears Tower in Chicago on the heels of the September 11, 2001, terror strikes. Those plans were aborted mainly because of the decisive U.S. response to the New York and Washington attacks, which disrupted the terrorist organization’s plans so thoroughly that it could not proceed, according to transcripts of his conversations with interrogators. . . . "The original plan was for a two-pronged attack with five targets on the East Coast of America and five on the West Coast," he told interrogators, according to the transcript. "We talked about hitting California as it was America’s richest state, and [al Qaeda leader Osama] bin Laden had talked about economic targets." He is reported to have said that bin Laden, who like Mohammed had studied engineering, vetoed simultaneous coast-to-coast attacks, arguing that "it would be too difficult to synchronize." Mohammed then decided to conduct two waves of attacks, hitting the East Coast first and following up with a second series of attacks. "Osama had said the second wave should focus on the West Coast," he reportedly said.
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| Posted by:Mike |
| #3 Why not believe him? What reason would he have to lie? Clearly, the national reaction after 9/ll, INCLUDING the roundups that immediately followed and the war on the Taliban screwed them up royally. And continues to mess them up. Bravo to President Bush. An aggressive response, taking the war directly to the enemy at home and abroad stopped who knows how many more murders? Can you just imagine what air attacks on downtown LA, SF, Seattle, Chicago and Denver would have done? Bush's handling of 9/11 is why he is going to destroy Kerry and his appeasing Democratic pals in November. When the time is nigh, none of this BS from Clarke and the other midgets is going to mean jack. Kerry is the guy running for president and he's a liberal who is weak on terrorism...like most of the rest of his party. |
| Posted by: RMcLeod 2004-03-30 8:08:23 PM |
| #2 Kudos to Bush & co. if this is true. If we can believe this guy, they didn't expect the bashing they got. Now let's finish the job! |
| Posted by: The Doctor 2004-03-30 11:25:48 AM |
| #1 "Afterwards, we never got time to catch our breath, we were immediately on the run," Mohammed is quoted as saying. I hope he wasn't just trying to blow smoke up his questioner's arse. |
| Posted by: eLarson 2004-03-30 11:13:22 AM |