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Stardate 20011110.2118 (On Screen via long range sensors): bin Laden has made a video where he states that he and al Qaeda were behind the attacks on September 11 -- as if there were any doubt about that among those not trying to deceive themselves. He states that the point was what amounts to genocide: it wasn't a military action, it was a political one, and their ultimate goal is to kill us all. He says:

There are two types of terror, good and bad. What we are practising is good terror. We will not stop killing them and whoever supports them.

This tends to argue against pacifistic response, for obvious reasons, unless you're trying to deceive yourself. I found something else he said interesting:

The Twin Towers were legitimate targets, they were supporting US economic power. These events were great by all measurement. What was destroyed were not only the towers, but the towers of morale in that country.

This supports something I suspected: al Qaeda didn't expect the response it got from the US. It thought that the attack would make us fearful and cause us to withdraw; its goal was to weaken our morale. The actual result was precisely the opposite: to fill us with a cold rage and resolve to see this to the end. They did not expect us to attack the way we did; they expected us to pull our troops out of Saudi Arabia and to withdraw support for Israel. The attack in September was not viewed by them as the opening salvo in World War III, it was viewed by them as being the entire war, and they expected victory because of it.

That is supported by something else. If indeed it was intended to be the opening salvo in a war, why have there been no further attacks? But if they actually expected that one attack to cow us and make us withdraw, giving them the political result they seek, then it makes more sense that they had no other attacks planned and ready to go. (discuss)

Update: This in turn adds credence to the idea that they don't have nuclear weapons. If they thought that a single blow would be enough to win, then it's clear that they wanted to make that blow as major as they could make it, which is why they tried to hijack at least four jets. If they had a nuclear device, they wouldn't have been fucking around with jets; they've have levelled lower Manhattan.