As has been widely reported, a statement has been broadcast on Al Jazeera (full BBC transcript…..edited AlJazeera translation) apparently from Osama Bin Laden.
Osama says that the US should be prepared for another attack “soon”. (In computer speak, we’d interpret that as “RSN” or Real Soon Now.. like Windows Vista). And graciously offers the US a “truce”. They’ll stop their attacks if the US (and by extension Canada) kindly pulls out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Well, we all know the real probability of either a truce or a pullout… and I will give the US some credit, their Homeland Security measures do seem to have worked at least until now. If you had asked me on September 12, 2001 when the next attack on the US would be, I would have said within a couple years. It’s now going on 5 years… but, like a comet from above, it is only a matter of time before Al Quaeda pulls off another attack on US soil. It won’t be pretty.
Which brings me to President Jaques Chirac of France. Who apparently said today, while visiting a French nuclear submarine base,
states who would “use terrorist means against us, just like anyone who would envisage using, in one way or another, arms of mass destruction, must understand that they would expose themselves to a firm and adapted response from us
Nothing like a little nuclear-innuendo to keep your juices flowing. My take? Chiracs nuclear sabre is about as sharp as a butter knife… and it doens’t really matter because he’d be swinging in thin air anyway.
What’s he going to do if AQ attacks Paris? Nuke the Mullahs in Tehran? Nuke Hamid Karzai in Kabul? How about Musharraf in Islamabad? Or maybe he’ll just randomly lob a bomb into the “tribal regions” between Pakistan and Afghanistan and hope he gets UBL in the fallout.
Sillyness.
Usama I take a little more seriously… but again, he is playing up the media war, the probability of an actual strike is, thankfully, fairly low thanks to hyper-awareness south of the 49th.
Nothing to see here… move along…