Crusaders surrounded by Saladin's army, October 2, 1187 (Second Crusade), etching by Gustave Dore (left) and "Little Boy" mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, August 6, 1945
The "big one" will take place Tuesday, September 2, "60 days before the presidential election," according to an Al Queda operative described as "credible" by British intelligence, reports Newsday, but that may be a little too obvious*:
On Sept. 2 President George W. Bush is expected to address the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden.
Counterterrorism officials are analyzing data from a computer seized in Pakistan last month to see if financial institutions in addition to the five disclosed Sunday are at risk of attack, U.S. officials said yesterday . . . "There is mention of other places."
The laptop computer was seized on July 25 following the arrest after a 12-hour gun battle of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who is wanted for his alleged role in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa . . . Pakistan's information minister confirmed to The Associated Press yesterday that e-mail data retrieved from Ghailani's computer indicated planned attacks in both the United States and Britain.
The CIA had tipped off Pakistani authorities on the location of Ghailani's safehouse in Gujrat, Pakistan, after tracking down an al-Qaida computer engineer, who had e-mailed the data to Ghailani, 12 days earlier, U.S. officials said . . . analysts "are continuing to exploit the data to see if anything boils to the surface."
*Credible or not, why should we trust this fellow who's singing to the Brits? We still favor our original theory [Someone has to. -- ed], that the target date for the Mother of All Terrorist Acts is Saturday, October 2 -- not 60 days before the election, but 30 -- our rationale, explained in detail in our post "1099 and all that," being that October 2 is the anniversary of Saladin's recapture of Jerusalem in 1187, after 88 years of Crusader rule. Al Queda could be trying to make us think the date is September 2 to (1) catch us off guard and force us to waste energy and resources and (2) allow themselves one more opportunity to study how our security forces would attempt to foil them (steps down from soap box and removes tin foil hat).
Note: In quotations from other publications, we retain that publication's spelling of Osama's organization -- in Newsday's case, al-Qaida -- rather than conform to our own editorial choice, Al Queda.
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