At 05:21 PM 10/31/04 -0800, John Young wrote:

To state the obvious to Major Variola, CDC will have first indication of a devastating US attack, reported fragmentarily under its links to hospitals, clinics and physicians, against which the might military and law enforcement have no defenses.

You thought I meant bio plagues?! Jeezus John, is your metaphorizer broken? Any bio hazard is accidental, or Detrick, not Osama. A *succession of attacks against the Empire* is what I mean, alluding to the Jews attacking the Pharaoh, until he let them alone. Pharoah=US, Moses=UBL, Jews=Moslems. Get your head around that one. News: The infectious biological "attack" will be an accident of the modularity and recombination of influenza on some chinese duck/pig/human farm. It will not be intentional but it will kill a lot before the vaccine can be produced, which takes ca. 6 mos.. See 1918 pandemic, and add jet airplanes. A recent _Science_ article described a model of this. You are one or two days away from that duck/pig/human incubator nowadays, no matter where you live. That will happen, but it won't be intentional. The geopoli implications will be fun, but UBL is not involved there. Observation: A non-infectious biological attack (eg anthrax which isn't infectious) is cheap, but not Al Q's preferred MO. They go for the special effects type attacks, simultaneous so you know its them. (Otherwise it could be a suicical egyptian, a rudder jerked too hard, a screw-jack improperly lubricated, the NTSC is very creative.) Of course the Ft Detrick folks enjoy sending the occasional sporulated letter to senators, but hey, their funding was running out, you do what you gotta do. Implementation: A chem attack is pretty nifty, and in many ways easier than fission or RDDs. Since there are so many chems moving around, and rad sources are so easy to detect, by virtue of the energy of the emissions, and controlled/surveilled materials. A tanker into a school is double the fun, its been years since Columbine, and the underbelly is itching for a scratch. (Again, you need to pull off 2 the same day.) I wonder if there is a school that enrolls only first born sons, that would be interesting to read about in your mosaic er netscape er IE browser, eh? Since your allusion-detector is broken, "mosaic", get it? History: "Let my people go" and taking a beating only works if you have wannabe-moral brits who want to divest anyway and your name is Ghandi. Otherwise the biblical plagues, aka asymmetric attack, approach is guaranteed to work in the limit. All you need is enough popular support. Its there. It only took 200 dead marines and one bomb to evict us from Lebanon, maybe 50K corpses for S. Nam, don't know about N Korea, but do the math. .mil are disposable, but they have families that whine and vote. And the press is not *entirely* 0wn3d by the .gov, yet. Conclusion: Again, the Mosaic approach of repeated asymmetric attacks on the Pharoah is what Al Q is up to. Eventually the Pharoah/US gets fed up and says fuck it. Maybe not this election, but eventually, and Al has time. GW has only 4 more years, at best, and Rummy & Cheney are scheduled for a box in the ground pretty soon. Wolfy has more time, but after a few more kilocorpses will lose power with Joe Sixpack and Joe's post-Bush "leader". Operation Just Cause Just because I'm an atheist doesn't mean I have to ignore Egyptian/Hebrew history. Just because I live here doesn't mean I don't think the US deserves the treatment that any Empire deserves. Just because I'm an American doesn't mean I can't use sophisticated allusions. Just because I say Mosaic Plagues doesn't mean I'm talking about frogs & locusts. Dig?