AET: 2008 where 9/11 is later and worse

OK, I'm looking at how the 2008 Presidential Election -- primaries to general -- might play out in the following TL:

2001 -- PoD where rote information concerning the upcoming attacks is passed on, allowing the FBI to make some fairly last minute arrests, preventing the 9/11 attacks; however, not all the conspirators are apprehended...

2002 -- w/ no 9/11, the Republicans lose (fairly few seats) in the House and Senate, leading to a Democratic Congress

2004 -- w/ no Iraq War and a fairly good economy (better than OTL), Bush wins re-election (by slightly wider margins than OTL)

2001-05 -- Al Qaeda, still with its mostly unmolested safe haven in Afghanistan, plans and coordinates an even bolder operation, starting with the acquisition of nuclear material...

2006 -- In September, while President Bush is at an event in the area, an AQ agent detonates a suitcase dirty bomb in Manhattan; casualties are in the thousands, among them, the President

later 2006 -- Dick Cheney is sworn in as President; in seeking as much "deference" in the short term as possible, as a gesture to Congressional Democrats he announces that he "will not seek, nor accept" to be elected in his own right in 2008. He also promises that whoever is appointed Vice-President in his place will be similarly pledged.
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Now, obviously the emergence of the Cheney Presidency described above (as well as the preceding alternate Bush Administration) would have a part to play in the main concern of this thread -- the 2008 election -- but I think we can make some good guesses without going into too much detail.

For example, John McCain, coming from a somewhat neoconservative tradition, seems like the natural choice for Republicans in this election. Similarly, I'd think the Democratic hawks are likely to do better in TTL's 2008; I'd say that makes Hillary an even more natural frontrunner.

Any thoughts?
 

MickyD77

Banned
Nuclear attack on the US?

Not exactly genocide, but to paraphrase, 'Pashtu will be a language spoken only in hell.'. I just don't see how Afghanistan avoids sprouting mushrooms, especially with Darth Cheney unleashed.
 
This is very difficult to predict as there are a lot of variables here.

I would be one hell of a mess come 2008, as the seeds of the financial crisis were pretty much baked into the cake at that point. We would be both in the midst of a fairly new war with the global financial capital badly damaged when the financial crisis hits. Or perhaps the chaos of the aftermath of the attack somehow accelerates the financial crisis so that it hits prior to the start of the primaries? It is very likely that a number of the OTL players in the financial crisis wind up as casualties of the attack; that could in turn affect how the crisis plays out.

A large part of the answer to how this plays out politically is the reaction to the 2006 attack. This is post-Katrina (if that went as badly as it did OTL) and in the midst of the 2006 GOP congressional scandals, so it may well play out that the GOP is blamed for falling asleep at the switch while terrorists were building a bomb. However, such a massive event could well bury the scandals the way 9/11 buried much of the Enron story.

This could well benefit Hillary -- it certainly wouldn't help Obama -- but one very real possibility is that Hillary winds up a casualty of the attack. She was, after all, a Senator from New York and up for reelection that year.

There's probably a worst-case scenario in all this that winds up being very ugly with a war or two -- possibly involving the use of nuclear weapons -- going on while the global economy heads into the toilet in a manner far worse than OTL.
 
A large part of the answer to how this plays out politically is the reaction to the 2006 attack. This is post-Katrina (if that went as badly as it did OTL) and in the midst of the 2006 GOP congressional scandals, so it may well play out that the GOP is blamed for falling asleep at the switch while terrorists were building a bomb. However, such a massive event could well bury the scandals the way 9/11 buried much of the Enron story.

Hadn't even thought of Katrina -- at the very least, the absence of the Iraq War (at the time) would free up a lot more National Guard, meaning they may well be on the ground sooner.
 

GarethC

Donor
2001-05 -- Al Qaeda, still with its mostly unmolested safe haven in Afghanistan, plans and coordinates an even bolder operation, starting with the acquisition of nuclear material...

2006 -- In September, while President Bush is at an event in the area, an AQ agent detonates a suitcase dirty bomb in Manhattan; casualties are in the thousands, among them, the President...
Any thoughts?
This TL has President Bush being killed by an ordinary bomb in a suitcase, not a nuclear weapon. I think that's unlikely - the Secret Service is pretty good at preventing that sort of thing.

As I understand it, a "dirty bomb" is a conventional explosive (like a 55-gallon drum filled with ordinary fertilizer doused with diesel fuel) around which is packed radioactive material.

The bomb is probably somewhat less destructive than the same explosive would be, if it was used to commit a conventional terror bombing - the terrorists' aim is to widely disperse the radioactive material, causing a large public health risk and requiring an expensive cleanup operation, not to kill passers-by.

Or have I misunderstood, and AQ has actually detonated a fission warhead in Manhattan?
 
This TL has President Bush being killed by an ordinary bomb in a suitcase, not a nuclear weapon. I think that's unlikely - the Secret Service is pretty good at preventing that sort of thing.

As I understand it, a "dirty bomb" is a conventional explosive (like a 55-gallon drum filled with ordinary fertilizer doused with diesel fuel) around which is packed radioactive material.

The bomb is probably somewhat less destructive than the same explosive would be, if it was used to commit a conventional terror bombing - the terrorists' aim is to widely disperse the radioactive material, causing a large public health risk and requiring an expensive cleanup operation, not to kill passers-by.

Or have I misunderstood, and AQ has actually detonated a fission warhead in Manhattan?

Short answer -- I'm not entirely clear on the details. This has gone through some versions in my head -- initially, I saw AQ getting a suitcase nuke and detonating it a few blocks from Bush's location, until I thought that might be too much for them to pull off; while a dirty bomb is easier (and thus more plausible as a next attack), I wanted to keep the idea of Bush dying in said attack so that we'd still get President Cheney.

Just to spitball -- maybe the cell decides to combine the dirty bomb explosion with an assassination, puts it into a small private plane, and crashes it in the same building as the president?

Another thought -- Bush doesn't have to necessarily die instantaneously in the attack...
 

Hyperion

Banned
Even pre 9/11, airspace around the POTUS is usually heavily monitored. The idea of someone using a Cesna or something to take him out isn't ASB, but it's bordering on suspension of disbelief.
 
Even pre 9/11, airspace around the POTUS is usually heavily monitored. The idea of someone using a Cesna or something to take him out isn't ASB, but it's bordering on suspension of disbelief.

Well like I said, I'm not clear myself on the details of the attack -- I had the initial idea of AQ detonating a fission suitcase nuke, but that seemed to be a stretch as I read about it (not so much that they couldn't get their hands on the expertise and material needed for a suitcase nuke if they so deigned, mind you, but that they'd go to all the extra effort when a dirty bomb, which is easier to make, could do so much damage in its own right).
 
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