9/11 II being the Benghazi consulate attack that should have ended Barack Obama's presidency aborning, just for clarification.
Close to a dozen aircraft were grabbed by Libyan militants, and since they are "associated" with terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, and the latter are "in the consumer transportation market," the possibility of the jets being used as Islamikazes is very high. The fear is not just for North Africa but also for America too, with New York City being understandably on edge.
Even better, this time hijacking wouldn't even be necessary:
Islamist militias in Libya took control of nearly a dozen commercial jetliners last month, and Western intelligence agencies recently issued a warning that the jets could be used in terrorist attacks across North Africa.
Intelligence reports of the stolen jetliners were distributed within the U.S. government over the past two weeks and included a warning that one or more of the aircraft could be used in an attack later this month on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, said U.S. officials familiar with the reports....
The U.S. intelligence community has observed a “significant increase” in chatter among terrorist organizations as the 13th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks nears.
“We’ve noticed a significant increase in chatter among Islamic terrorist organizations overseas both on the Internet and phone lines,” a U.S. government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Blaze.
I'm still wondering how eleven jet airliners get "lost" like that. Were they all just abandoned by airline personnel who fled for their lives? If civilian airlines were pulling out of Libya, wouldn't they have left in the airliners? Or otherwise retained possession of them? Those are heap big company assets after all, each one worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Even if you didn't care about them being turned into gigantic cruise missiles, that's a lot of sunk capital asset cost to write off by an industry that isn't exactly economically healthy as it is, dating back in no small part to what was done with four other civilian jet airliners almost thirteen years ago. And I'm assuming that there are government regulations about the disposition of such aircraft that prohibit abandoning them to bloodthirsty jihadist maniacs looking for a spectacular encore. At least, I hope there is.
Well, let's see: They have eleven big, fat, winged missiles. What could be their target list? How about....
1) White House
2) U.S. Capitol
3) Freedom Tower in New York City
They already struck the Pentagon before, so strike that one. Detroit, Michigan is already a wasteland, so hitting there would be redundant. Would they go for symbolism with the remainder or infrastructure that could magnify the proportions of mass civilian casualties? If the former, there's the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower, the Space Needle, the Transamerica Pyramid, and others. If the latter, there are three times as many nuclear power plants as they have pilfered planes, and there are hydroelectric dams (Don't know if a 747 could "bust" Grand Coulee Dam, but if it did, the deluge down the Columbia River would take out every other dam on the river, wiping out one community after another, including my hometown, my dad, aunt, and uncle). Maybe allocate four to each category. Combined the "warriors of Allah" could run up a death toll in the tens or even hundreds of thousands. Certainly enough to make Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his crew look like pikers.
Their advantages?
1) Barack Obama
2) What Barack Obama has done to U.S. intelligence, counterterrorism, and military capabilities
3) Not having to bother with hijacking the planes while in flight, and not having to deal with the possibility of passenger counterattacks, as took place on Flight 93
Only disadvantage I can conceive of is that, with no passengers at risk, it would be a much simpler, more straightforward task for what remains of domestic U.S. air defenses to shoot down attacking Islamikazes the instant they show up on radar screens. The existing transponders for the aircraft in question are already known, fake ones would be easily spotted, and stolen ones' duplication would be quickly noticed even before their veering off assigned course.
Which leads to an ominous question - several, actually:
1) Suppose the airliner seizures are a distraction from a different mode of attack?
2) Suppose they aren't looking to attack on 9/11, but three days later or four days earlier? The NFL regular season starts this weekend, and that means fifteen mass-casualty targets every Sunday for the next five months. Slaying a million American football fans "on any given Sunday" must have its gory appeal.
3) Suppose they're not looking to attack all at once? Remember the scenario depicted at the end of Tom Clancy's novel A Debt Of Honor: crashing a jetliner into the House chamber during the State of the Union address when the entire U.S. government is in that one place. Largely or entirely decapitate the country's leadership in the space of few seconds.
OTOH, that would eliminate advantage #1. But I'm sure it's a price they'd be willing to pay.
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