Would seem to be their main purpose. They tend to be militarily insignificant, meaningless, really.

Consider the Palestinian suicide bombers. Absolutely irrelevant militarily. Even taking out the USS Cole didn't seem to put much of a hole in the defenses of the US, and wasn't followed up militarily.

For that matter, WTC was an attention getter. After all, as mentioned here before, it's not as if 9-11 took out a carrier task force.

(Please. WTC was terrible, unexcuseable, and the perpetrators need to be found and dealt with. And my heart goes out to the people and their families. As with the people and relatives of the Cole tragedy.)

Don't really know that ANY terrorist act is particulary significant. Even the bombing in Lebanon which killed 242 Marines wasn't all that damaging in the bigger picture. Should the US wanted, it could have had those people replaced and much more rapidly.

And, the letter bomber HAS gotten attention. What he's done has worked.

An interesting thing about his bombs. The TV picture I saw showed a 6 inch 1/2 inch galvanized pipe nipple with two caps. It would be cheap and easy to make something which looked like that. I would think there might be a few "copycat" bombers around before this is over.

And, I would think people would notice someone who purchased 20 6 inch nipples, 40 caps, and a few drill bits for the holes for the wires to the initiator. It's not as if the order would be hidden in an order for mixed nipples, unless the guy is a plumbers apprentice, or maintenance guy at a large facility.

Interesting.

Arf