11-15-02 [dates are linked]: The FBI announces that Al Qaeda may be planning “spectacular attacks” in the United States that will cause “mass casualties” and “severe damage” to the economy.
3-19-03: One of the real ones.
3-2-04: Fox News reports that in February 2004, U.S. officials released what they said was an intercepted letter written by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, outlining a strategy of spectacular attacks on Shiites aimed at sparking a Sunni-Shiite civil war. The release of the letter (it was leaked to NY Times reporter Dexter Filkins, whose article about it made the front page of the Times) is later revealed to be part of a U.S. military propaganda campaign to exaggerate the importance of Zarqawi.
4-21-05: Retired Army general John Keane, just back from a fact-finding trip to Iraq, warns that insurgents may be planning spectacular large-scale attacks to slow the momentum of recent military and political gains there.
9-10-05: A U.S. military intelligence official, Chief Warrant Officer Larry Tersone, predicts that militants in Afghanistan “will try to conduct an operation of a spectacular nature within a significant population center” as elections approach.
4-27-07: Army Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott says that while there has been a slight increase in the number of “spectacular” car-bomb attacks around Baghdad, there has also been positive movement as a result of the U.S.-Iraqi surge strategy.
6-14-07: Gathering of Eagles, a “grass-roots activist group,” warns that “spectacular” attacks are probably being planned against U.S. and coalition forces in the War on Terror™.
6-27-07: Testifying to Congress that the surge is working, Frederick W. Kagan says: “Spectacular attacks rose as al Qaeda conducted a counter-surge of its own, but have recently begun falling again.”
7-1-07: ABC News reports that an unnamed senior official told it that a Department of Homeland Security document warns that al-Qaeda is planning a “spectacular” summer of terrorism.
7-2-07: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says that although “we know that they tend to want to do attacks that are spectacular,” there is no credible information about a specific al-Qaeda threat to the U.S.
7-3-07: Army Brig. Gen. Perry Wiggins says that he expects the enemy to oppose the coalition effort by launching spectacular attacks on the Iraqi people.
7-7-07: U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus says that Sunni insurgents will try to “pull off a variety of sensational attacks and grab the headlines to create a mini-Tet.” [OK, maybe 'sensational' isn't exactly 'spectacular']
7-11-07: Brigadier General Kevin Bergner says that he expects al-Qaida in Iraq to lash out with “spectacular attacks” after major U.S.-led offensives have disrupted the group’s activities.
As I’ve pointed out before, correctly predicting mayhem has been one of the few things the Bush administration and its tools in the U.S. military have been good at lately (although their record here at home, at least since August 6, 2001, is abysmal). But the best Predictor of all might be the Decider, who said very simply during his last State of the Union address:
“…the year ahead [will be] bloody and violent.”
Just recently we have been flooded with accounts of where al Qaeda has been making “dry runs” for terrorist attacks.
These “dry runs” have been traced back to a single 60 year old woman with leaking ice packs wrapped in clear tape and two packages of bulk cheese. Some “dry run”.
Since the ice packs appeared to be tampered with I have no problems with the baggage inspectors taking her aside and questioning her, as they did. Since this “threat” could be easily explained I do have a big problem with this being put out to the public as something it wasn’t and it surely wasn’t a “dry run” of bin Laden terrorists.
Playing the fear card at every opportunity only means that when something does happen it too will be treated as the boy who cried wolf too many times and not be taken seriously.