From: Tyler Durden <camera_lumina@hotmail.com> Sent: Oct 23, 2004 7:41 PM To: measl@mfn.org, jamesd@echeque.com Cc: cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net Subject: Re: Airport insanity

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.

Right. I don't visualize OBL & Co sitting up nights trying to decide whether their next attack needlessly terrorizes civilians, I think that's a decision they already made. I'm pointing out that once you've started justifying acts of terror by people you agree with, it seems to be quite hard to draw any meaningful line between them and Al Qaida. Now, this causes no problem for me--OBL, Tim McVeigh, the Unabomber, they all look like remorseless murderers to me, and I see the differences between them mainly in terms of how effective and dangerous they are. ...

And while I suspect that Al-Qaeda were probably unaware in advance of the impact on Telecom, the rest was certainly a conscious decision.

I don't know if this was a goal, exactly, but the other thing the 9/11 attacks achieved was to scare the hell out of the power elite in the country, especially the people at the top of government, media, and finance. That made all kinds of dumb responses (some parts of the Patriot act, Bush's breathtaking claim of the power to lock up citizens without trial, his administration's equally breathtaking claim that he could ignore laws and treaties against torture on his authority, the invasion of Iraq) possible.

-TD

--John