Should we take this threat seriously. Remember: the last 2 al Qaeda terror attacks on the U.S. (WTC I and II) occurred early on in the tenure of the new President. And with the preoccupation with the economy maybe the government, and people, have ignored the terror threat as happened last time.
The top Taliban commander in Pakistan promised an assault on Washington "soon" - one he says will "amaze" the world.
"Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world," Baitullah Mehsud told The Associated Press by phone.
Mehsud also claimed responsibility for Monday's attack on a police academy outside the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, saying it was in retaliation for U.S. missile strikes against militants along the Afghan border.
Mehsud and other Pakistani Taliban militants are believed to be based in the country's lawless areas near the border with Afghanistan, where they have stepped up their attacks throughout Pakistan.
One year ago, CBS News security correspondent Bob Orr reported that U.S. intelligence officials were increasingly concerned that Mehsud could eclipse even Osama bin Laden as a threat to America.
The U.S. recently announced a $5 million bounty on Mehsud's head. Asked about it, he told the AP he would be happy to "embrace martyrdom."
Mehsud has made voluminous threats against the West for years, as he rose to his current stature as the head of the Taliban in Pakistan, and he gave no apparent specifics in his threat on the U.S. capital on Tuesday, notes CBS News' Sami Yousafzai in Peshawar.
The attack on the police academy outside Lahore left at least seven police officers and two civilians dead on Monday.
Determining who actually carried out Monday's brazen assault on the police may prove difficult, if not impossible, in a country where numerous militant groups and tribes overlap and cooperate - both in acts of terror and claims of responsibility.
Conflicting Mehsud's claim, Pakistani intelligence officials based in Lahore told CBS News' Farhan Bokhari on Tuesday that Mehsud and the Taliban may not have been directly involved in the siege, based on ongoing interrogations of militants apprehended after the incident.
Security agents have not ruled out the possibility that militants from the banned group Lashkar-e-Taiba may have carried out the attack with some support from Mehsud, but the extent of any such link remains unclear.
A Taliban source told Yousafzai on Monday, meanwhile, that a group of militants called the Fedayeen al-Islam have been trying for some time to stage high-profile hostage takings to demand the release of Taliban and other militants held by the Pakistani government.
And it could be a cyber attack. We are certainly vulnerable to such methods (read about non-Qaeda cyber threats, like Conficker).
The United States often cannot quickly or reliably trace a cyber attack back to its source, even as rival nations and extremists may be looking to wage virtual war, a top official warned Tuesday.
"It often takes weeks and sometimes months of subsequent investigation," said US intelligence director Dennis Blair, "and even at the end of very long investigations you're not quite sure" who carried out the offensive.
China, Russia and other countries already could be potent online foes and terrorists may find it easier in the future to hire hackers to target key systems, Blair told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"Terrorists are interested in using cyberweapons, just the way they're interested in using most any weapon they can use against us," notably to target systems critical to the high-tech driven US economy, he said.
"We currently assess that their capability does not match their ambitions in that area, although that's something we have to work on all the time because things become more widespread, terrorists can find hackers to work for them," he said.
The mess in Pakistan is the key to whether al Qaeda/Taliban will succeed against us:
Two high profile guerrilla attacks in Lahore in the space of a month have heightened fears of Islamist militancy engulfing Pakistan, despite U.S. promises of support for the year-old civilian government.
The assault by gunmen on a police academy in Lahore on Monday and another on the Sri Lankan cricket team in the city four weeks earlier brought home the depth of insecurity in Pakistan, while television channels carried the images worldwide.
"The government and the military are facing a crisis of credibility," said Ahmed Rashid, author of "Descent into Chaos", a book chronicling Pakistan's slide into the grip of militant religious extremists.
"There is no strategic plan or vision over how to deal with extremism and terrorism."
Nuclear-armed, and a hiding place for al Qaeda, Pakistan has become a foreign policy nightmare for the United States and other allies in the West.
U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled last Friday results of a strategy review for Pakistan and Afghanistan that made the annihilation of al Qaeda the principle objective.
A centrepiece of Obama's approach to Pakistan was the promise of billions of dollars in aid to help build state institutions, and improve the social and economic welfare to give people faith in President Asif Ali Zardari's civilian government.
The Pakistanis need all the help they can get.
"This incident definitely raises very serious questions about the capacity of our intelligence agencies and security apparatus to deal with these groups," Lahore-based security analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi said after the attack on the police academy.
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