"And this was a prime target. Financial disruption from *just* the tower collapses was significant across the economy as a whole: lost records, insurance claims, lawsuits, etc., exacted a very substantial loss against their enemy." That was nothing compared to the real damage, which I've heard few people point out. There was a telecom CO in (I think) #4 World Trade Center, and falling debris took the giant Verizon CO across the street on West Street offline for almost a week. The result was that Wall Street was basically cut off for several days...the effect of that dwarfs all the other stuff. (Although I wonder...Pipar Jaffrey was pretty much wiped out. Even if the records survived, they lost so much manpower that might have actually had a small but worldwide impact.) Of course, I truly doubt OBL & his posse realized this when they targeted the WTC (and the fact that they continue to pretty much ignore relatively ungarded COs shows they still don't realize this). If they took out a few key COs downtown one morning the effect on the economy would be significant.
From: "J.A. Terranson" <measl@mfn.org> To: Justin <justin-cypherpunks@soze.net> CC: cypherpunks@minder.net Subject: Re: UBL is George Washington Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 18:59:22 -0500 (CDT)
On Tue, 6 Jul 2004, Justin wrote:
On 2004-07-06T11:28:41-0700, Eric Cordian wrote:
Sunder wrote:
Right, WTC as a target doesn't make any strategic sense.
Doesn't hitting a world financial center impede the funding of imperialism?
Empirically, I don't think so. Since September 11th, funding to the military and security industries have increased substantially through DHS and military contracts. It may be that the only way out is through, and that the only way to be free from Western Imperialism is to cause it to strangle itself.
Precisely. They are doing to us what we did to the soviets: they making us spend ourselves right out of existence.
In the short term, however, terrorists have not succeeded in getting our imperialist policies changed.
9/11 with Dubya at the helm can have only one result.
Dubya at the helm can have only 1 result. 9/11 was just his cover.
If you apply the same standards the US uses to classify dual use infrastructure, and organizations "linked to" the enemy, I think the WTC is pretty high on the target list.
Yep. Even ignoring specific entities that officed in the WTC, it was an effective target. When a government is in debt 70%+ of the GDP (2002 - $10.4T), there's little distinction between private financial targets and government targets.
And this was a prime target. Financial disruption from *just* the tower collapses was significant across the economy as a whole: lost records, insurance claims, lawsuits, etc., exacted a very substantial loss against their enemy.
The US bombed water treatment plants, electrical facilities, and bridges in Iraq. Certainly not military targets either.
Each democratic government likes to flood the logos with the notion that it only attacks military targets; it convinces citizens that their government is humane, and helps to pacify the non-interventionists.
In practice, intelligence is never accurate. Hitting only military targets, even if that were the goal which is clearly not the case -- is not possible.
Nonetheless, the military *does* consider places like WTC to be legitimate *military* targets.
-- Yours,
J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org
"...justice is a duty towards those whom you love and those whom you do not. And people's rights will not be harmed if the opponent speaks out about them."
Osama Bin Laden
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