Posted by D_Aubrey at h24-76-140-102.vs.shawcable.net on September 11, 2001 at 17:02:30:
There has been a lot of talk today about who could have done this. They say that the only person who could have pulled it off was Osama bin Laden. Then they say that he has denied doing it. The nature of terroism is that each act is meant to be a message. Most terrorist acts are followed up by several different factions, each claiming to be the cause. This has not happened today. In my opinion, this is because the terrorists went too far. So far that all the high-profile terrorist leaders in the world are denouncing it. Any organization in the world can see that if they claim to be responsible, even if they were not, it would be an extremely bad move, because NATO is out for blood. Despite harboring fantasies of striking out against the infidel west, most terrorists understand that if they actually did pull off something of this magnitude against the US, they would then be faced with an extreme response.
There are four possibilities I can see:
1). Osama bin Laden launched the attack, and is having second thoughts about admitting it, seeing as that it will get the entirety of the middle east flattened and irradiated.
2). Osama bin Laden set up the attack, but aborted when he realized how well it would work, and what response it would elicit, yet one of his lieutenants disagreed, and gave the order anyway.
3). This was the botched first wave of a larger attack. It has been said on the news that the Pennsylvania crash may have been an attempt to crash into Camp David. The first thing I thought when I heard that they hit the Pentagon was that that would be the first step of an invasion, to fragment US Military Command. But they didn't get Camp David, and they bounced before they hit the Pentagon. And nothing more has happened since early this morning. So, either they got what they wanted, or they've aborted due to catastropic failure to cripple the United States leadership structure.
4). Some force inside the United States caused this, either to raise government security measures for added protection of the country, or else to simply cause chaos (as hellish a motive as it might seem).
In either case, this is a wholly confusing scenario, because, as of now, this is a senseless tragedy that is up in the air as far as reasons go. Nobody can even mourn, because they're all still looking for answers.
And even when we all get answers, we have to come to terms with the concept that a human being or group of human beings could exercise so much brainpower in such a horrible way.