Also, the people Wright speak to feel that the u.s. isn't the only target and, indeed, Europe may be the bigger, more immediate target in an effort to take back Muslim territory. The Madrid bombings may have been planned way before 9/11, for instance. Oh, and terrorists want Shrub to win the election.
It's a long piece, but worth a read--keep a tab of salt with you, of course. :)
"One of the most sobering pieces of information to come out of the investigation of the March 11th bombings is that the planning for the attacks may have begun nearly a year before 9/11. In October, 2000, several of the suspects met in Istanbul with Amer Azizi, who had taken the nom de guerre Othman Al AndalusiOthman of Al Andalus. Azizi later gave the conspirators permission to act in the name of Al Qaeda, although it is unclear whether he authorized money or other assistanceor, indeed, whether Al Qaeda had much support to offer. In June, Italian police released a surveillance tape of one of the alleged planners of the train bombings, an Egyptian housepainter named Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, who said that the operation "took me two and a half years." Ahmed had served as an explosives expert in the Egyptian Army. It appears that some kind of attack would have happened even if Spain had not joined the Coalitionor if the invasion of Iraq had never occurred."
...
" The fact that bin Laden was addressing nations as an equal showed a new confidence in Al Qaeda's ability to manipulate the political future. Exploiting this power will depend, in part, on convincing the West that Al Qaeda and bin Laden remain in control of the worldwide Islamist jihad. As long as Al Qaeda is seen as being an irrational, unyielding death cult, the only response is to destroy it. But if Al Qaedaamorphous as that entity has becomehas evolved into something like a virtual Islamist state that is trying to find a permanent place for itself in the actual world, then the prospect of future negotiations is not out of the question, however unlikely or repellent that may sound to Americans. After all, the Spanish government has brokered truces with ETA, which has killed four times as many people in Spain as Al Qaeda has, and the accelerated withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq following the train bombings has already set a precedent for accommodation, which was quickly followed by the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Last year, Germany paid a six-million-dollar ransom to Algerian terrorists, and the Philippines recently pulled its fifty troops out of Iraq in order to save a hostage from being beheaded."
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040802fa_fact
THE TERROR WEB by LAWRENCE WRIGHT Were the Madrid bombings part of a new, far-reaching jihad being plotted on the Internet? Issue of 2004-08-02 Posted 2004-07-26
"We're in a fucking stagmire."
--Little Carmine, 'The Sopranos'