Let us not forget the more tangible 'value' in bombing the WTC and messing up things downtown. First of all, the companies in the WTC were, to say the least, impacted (actually, the company I work for lost 11 people and relocated to NJ for about a year)....hitting them (and their workers) was probably not considered "collateral damage" by Al Qaeda, any more than bombing German or japanese urban production centers was considered that for the allies in WWII. Next comes the financial district and Wall Street as a whole. The third (and as it turned out by far the most impactful) was the destruction of the Telecom Central Office in #4 World Trade Center, along with bringing off-line the big Verizon CO across the street. These actually caused Wall Street to be knocked off line for several days, an impact that is hard to underestimate. And while I suspect that Al-Qaeda were probably unaware in advance of the impact on Telecom, the rest was certainly a conscious decision. -TD
From: "J.A. Terranson" <measl@mfn.org> To: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com> CC: "cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net" <cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net> Subject: Re: Airport insanity Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 15:14:22 -0500 (CDT)
On Sat, 23 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote:
"James A. Donald"
All of the terrorists came from countries that were beneficiaries of an immense amount of US help. Saudi Arabia was certainly not under attack. If they were Palestinians, and they hit the Pentagon but not the two towers, then they would be defending themselves.
John Kelsey
I'm still trying to understand the moral theory on which you differentiate hitting the two towers from the Oklaholma City bombing.
The pentagon did not have a branch office in the two towers. BATF had an office in the Murrah building.
Bzzzt! Try again.
There were a number of federales in the towers, INCLUDING atf, all the various branches of the armed services, and a large number of spook proxy points.
So they killed a whole bunch of people, most of whom had nothing to do with what they opposed, but surely including people who were doing business with Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Was McViegh targeting people who do business with BATF?
Besides which the terrorists did not target them for doing business with Israel, but for "World Trade" - globalization and all that.
Personal knowledge?
-- Yours,
J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF
"An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core"
S. Plath, Temper of Time
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