You can watch my report from today's 700 Club on the latest developments in the investigation into a suspected Al Qaeda cell on U.S. soil by clicking here. It's generally accepted among terrorism experts that Al Qaeda has always intended to top 9/11 with their next attack on U.S. soil (Dirty bomb? Chemical or biological weapons? Another aiirliner plot, like the one we saw foiled in '06?). That's why this latest plan to (reportedly) target NYC's mass transit sytem with a Madrid or London-style bombing puzzled me somewhat at first.
While certainly horrific, such an attack probably would not have caused mass casualties like on 9/11. Could it be that Al Qaeda's operational capability has been weakened so much in the past few years (and our intel and law enforcement work has been so stellar) that the group had to "lower the bar" so to speak when targeting the U.S.? After all, Al Qaeda's # 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called off a planned cyanide gas attack on the NYC subway system in 2003.
Or is it a simple case of Al Qaeda reaching the conclusion that it needed to carry out something on U.S. soil after eight years of inaction in order to maintain their street cred and relevance in the jihadi world?