Thanks, Bobby (and all of you for your well wishes!).

There has been some interesting modeling done with a couple DoD Cray
supercomputers (one of them is just down the street) regarding attacks
within the U.S. borders.  Essentially what's going on is that tens of
thousands of scenarios and tens of thousands of different parameters
(gathered from the latest Situation Reports) nested in those scenarios are
"played out" using the Crays.  If a pattern develops that is statistically
significant, the scenarios are manually examined for plausibility.  This is
one part of the process of determining the threat "level".

The latest indications are that we've pretty much protected the "hard"
targets: military bases, nuclear facilities, critical infrastructure, etc.
So, the "soft" targets and targets of opportunity are showing up as likely
loci for an attack.  Such places as: universities, defense related
industries, "icon" industries (ex. The "Coca Cola" facilities in Atlanta,
Proctor and Gamble's home office in Ohio, IBM's world HQ in New York),
secondary cities like Ken mentioned: Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, etc.

It's not an exact science, by any means.  It's about at the same level as
computerized weather modeling stood in the late '70s. (I only know these
things because I've been sent to Disaster Preparedness classes ad nauseum).

You'd be surprised at the amount of activity going on covertly in the US and
around the world.  I think I've mentioned this before, but for all the Bush
administration lacks in domestic policy, they've done a bang-up job of
keeping the lid on threats--many of them never even hit the media.  I can't
say that I would have felt nearly as calm with Mr. Clinton as
Commander-in-Chief.

But yes, Al Queda is getting more militant about hitting civilians on U.S.
soil.  The latest jihad specifically called for attacks against American men
women and children here in the States.  The idea is to use terror to change
American foreign policy by scaring the voters into demanding a complete
military and diplomatic withdrawal from Muslim theocracies.

-Kyle

-----Original Message-----
From: BG Greer, PhD [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 11:35 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Dang!


Kyle,

       I am sorry you friend gave his life for his country, although he
would
probably have preferred it to be that way. Be well when you batten down the
hatches. From the news, it sounds like Al Queda is quite serious in wanting
to bring terrorism to us.
Love to Laura and the kids.

Bobby