WI: The Original Plan For 9/11 Went Through?

Well, besides the OTL options of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the aforementioned possibility of Yemen, I would nominate two African peri-Middle Eastern countries as "next targets": Libya and Sudan. Both of them had dictatorial regimes that had been involved in terrorism (Sudan had even hosted Osama just the same way Afghanistan did) and there were calls to intervene against both IOTL for somewhat different reasons not necessarily very related to the War on Terror. And, of course, we did end up going in and toppling Gaddafi in 2011.

But I really think that's about it. Saudi Arabia is, as you note, a US ally; Pakistan is as well (at least nominally) and has nuclear weaponry; Syria is probably too tough; Iran is definitely too tough; Egypt and the other countries of the Arabian Peninsula aside from Yemen are US allies like Saudi Arabia; Algeria is fighting Islamic terrorists itself; and Morocco is, yet again, a US ally or at least not supporting terrorism. So there's really no other targets that the United States could plausibly intervene in other than the other countries and the three others mentioned above.

Syria isn't too tough, but it runs into the issue that Bush and Cheney and most establishment democrats believed Assad to be a reformer in Hillary's words and he was after 911 working with our CIA and playing up the I am out to change an old dictatorship for the better card. I know its a long time ago, but Assad jr. was once seen as the possible face of a better Middle East who learned from his fathers mistakes in butchering his people when they rose up in the 80s and supporting terrorism.

In regards to Libya Gaddafi made all the right moves from 2001-2003 in letting the CIA in, letting the US see what he was doing in terms of his unconventional weapons program, etc. The US wanted others like Iraq, Iran and North Korea to follow Libya's example. Iraq went down because it followed the reverse of the Libyan example in regards to its weapons program, it made its regime look more like a terror sponsor then it even was though they allowed in some terrorists fleeing Afghanistan and the US was sitting on a decade old cease fire from a previous war that never fully ended.

The thinking of the 90s in regards to terrorism still pervaded after 911 that the real danger is the rogue states who harbor and/or arm the terrorists so the smartest thing some governments in the region did (Iran, Libya and Syria) was distance themselves from been seen as terror sponsors.
 
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Syria isn't too tough, but it runs into the issue that Bush and Cheney and most establishment democrats believed Assad to be a reformer in Hillary's words and he was after 911 working with our CIA and playing up the I am out to change an old dictatorship for the better card. I know its a long time ago, but Assad jr. was once seen as the possible face of a better Middle East who learned from his fathers mistakes in butchering his people when they rose up in the 80s and supporting terrorism.

There's also the much bigger problem I didn't consider before in that Syria is a Russian ally and Russian naval bases are stationed in Syria. That's definitely something to consider if anyone was looking to invade.
 
There was a joint session of congress on Thursday the 6th. Does anyone happen to know what time of day it was at? If AQ attacked a joint session during regular work hours, they could paralyze the government and also get massive casualties from the towers.
I believe Bin Laden opposed hitting nuke plants out of environmental concerns.
What an odd man...
 
During my visit the 9/11 memorial, a tour guide told me that the original plans for 9/11 would've also targeted attractions across both coasts of America. Naturally, I was curious and after doing a bit of research on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's original plans for the terror attacks, I found out that he envisioned that twelve planes would be hijacked and eleven of those planes would crash into buildings across America.


If I remember correctly, the last plane would land safely and Khalid Mohammed (or some other terrorist) would deliver a speech on live television calling for people to reject the west and fight for Al-Qaeda. While the grand schematics of such a plan were certainly unfeasible (there was a reason why Osama rejected it), there might be some major repercussions had Al-Qaeda attacked a larger range of targets after gaining more resources and hijackers.

Ten planes? This many planes leaves a huge margin for error. The reason why Flight 93's passengers learned about the attack in New York was because when they were at Newark International Airport, there was flight congestion preventing the plane from leaving at 8:00. The plane only took off at 8:42, around the time Flight 11 hit the North Tower.

Having to hijack ten planes ignores the possibility that anything could go wrong in the plan. When it came to Flight 93, things did go wrong. The wreckage outside of Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania was the result.

What an odd man...

You think that's crazy? The terrorist who believed in stoning people to death was somehow forward-thinking enough to believe in climate change
 
Reuters said:
In a separate letter, bin Laden urged a close aide to launch a media campaign for the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that included a call for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
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There's also the much bigger problem I didn't consider before in that Syria is a Russian ally and Russian naval bases are stationed in Syria. That's definitely something to consider if anyone was looking to invade.

At the time the one Russian naval base in Syria at Latakia was literally a single pier and a warehouse without any Russian nationals or servicemen actually being their full time.

There was a joint session of congress on Thursday the 6th. Does anyone happen to know what time of day it was at? If AQ attacked a joint session during regular work hours, they could paralyze the government and also get massive casualties from the towers.
What an odd man...

Yeah Bin Laden was big on environmentalist anti capitalism.
 
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Pakistan is an interesting one. A 911 on steroids I think we follow with troops into the mountains of Western Pakistan the Taliban and al-Qaeda in a way we didn’t sans a few raids at the time. We probably don’t go outside the FATA.
Like....how? The supply line to Afghhanistan is through Pakistan. Not like Pakistan is going to let the US supply troops to invade its own territory. Bases in nearby countries for operations againts Pakistan is the obvious answer, but that ignores the elephant in the room, which is the fact Pakistan is a nuclear power. Any country which permits US basing is going to get a phone call from Islamabad saying do not allow the Americans to base in your territory or you can kiss your major cities goodbye*. While Pakistan has not stated its nuclear threshold, we can safely assume, be occupied by a foreign power is well beyond it.

And the point on the number of dead ignores a fact that it OTL took nearly a year for the final dead number to be certified at 3000. The dead number was being floated at 7-8000 when the Afghanistan operation started.


*That has to be the worst choice in history. A crazy superpower 10,000 km away versus a fearful nuclear power 1000 km away. Fuck, I would not want to be the decision maker of any country nearby in that senario.
 
I believe that OBL was aiming for maximum symbolism rather than maximum casualties. As I recall, he wasn't expecting the towers to actually collapse.
Yes, and the collapse caught out lots of people in the vicinity and the other buildings who were trapped. OBL expected a casualty figure of a few hundreds.
 
Yes, and the collapse caught out lots of people in the vicinity and the other buildings who were trapped. OBL expected a casualty figure of a few hundreds.

And at the time the towers and Manattan wasn't anywhere near as full as it would be a few hours later. With Manattan full of commuters and tourists even the evacuation is likely to have signifigantly higher casualties from stampedes and tramplings.
 
And at the time the towers and Manattan wasn't anywhere near as full as it would be a few hours later. With Manattan full of commuters and tourists even the evacuation is likely to have signifigantly higher casualties from stampedes and tramplings.
Problem is the chose the early morning due to having less full flights and lower security. So it’s not like the were unaware that there would be less people in the target building.
 
The September 11th attacks seems to have been carefully chosen for their symbolism. Bin Laden wanted to make high-visibility strikes against symbols of American power, but I'm not sure he was actually interested in visiting wide-spread destruction. The collapse of the towers, as others have noted, came as a surprise to him; he had expected that the towers would survive.

Had Bin Laden been aware of the design choices that made the Twin Towers more fragile than (say) the Empire State Building, I can imagine he might have chosen different targets, if only because a mass-casualty attack against the United States could have spun out of control. That, IIRC, is why he rejected attacks against nuclear plants.
 
So... the plan was to land a plane and then do what, demand a news crew? You'd have every hostage rescue unit in the country in a literal fist fight on the other side of the airport demanding to be the unit picked to storm the plane.

What soft of casualty figure would be enough for USA to go after Saudi Arabia?

Nothing short of the king going live on CNN and laughing about the number of dead Americans. The best you'd get otherwise might be some CIA or other three letter agency operations in SA going after guilty parties with a direct tie to the attack if the government refuses to help.
 
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