I think a successful radiological bomb attack is unlikely. I've seen several reports of extremely sensitive radiation detectors (not necessarily geiger counters) at locations inside of US cities. Some people who've recently gone through some sort of radio-medicine procedure have been stopped and questioned by police in NYC subways and downtown Washington, DC. Wouldn't be too terribly surprised if many US cities had some sort of protection here - certainly ports of entry. I'm thinking 'stealth blimp' (or whatever it is) platforms 24/7.

Chemical would probably be easier to do. Al qaeda has come very close several times. They almost succeeded in setting off nerve gas in the European Parliament in 1999, there was that recent thing in Britain, and a couple others I can't remember. Zarqawi in particular has a lot of expericence in this area - he ran al Qaeda's camp near Herat which specialized in such weapons. He's also associated with al Qaeda's ricin work in the Pankisi gorge in Georgia/Chechnya and Northern Iraq. They apparently devoloped a technique to deliver ricin as an aerosol.

I've noticed several small things that which may have been al Qaeda attacks but haven't been presented as such. Unusually bad forest fires, unexplained train derailments, explosions at refineries/chemical plants and some other junk. But this is mainly petty harassment.

I'm not sure whether al Qaeda will attempt a large attack before the US election or not. Al Qaeda pays very close attention to politics in target states. The attack in Spain was quite deliberate. It depends on thier calculation.

I agree that there will be attacks in Europe, though. Recently a huge amount of TNT and detonators were stolen from a supply depot in Norway. The depot was only checked every seven days. I'd be willing to bet that the thieves had it under surveillance for some time, and stole the stuff shortly after the last check. Those explosives could be anywhere in Europe now, including Britian.

A few loud shrieks in the sky this afternoon. An F16 is flying low, turning, returning to it's base course, and then branching off again, returning to base course. Ground search pattern. Made me kind of nervous until I heard Bush's motorcade went through today...