"Well, how about if you tell me why not one al Q operative has made it into the US, bought about any kind of explosives, loaded them in a Hertz van and driven to the Fall Fair in East Redneck, Arkansas and blown up a few dozen innocent Americans?"

Cause it would cost a bit of money and they don't love death as much as they claim. But it's also due probably the same reason there is probably fewer hijacks of planes in general- more awareness, and generally less tolerance for this- from the airlines and the passengers. And finally in general terms, blowing up world trade center ect, wasn't very profitable in terms of getting more money and getting more people to join their cause. But they are going to attack us again, they are trying, and they are looking for some weakness they can take advantage of- and for instance the US Mexician border is one such weakness.

"You have to admit, small scale terrorist actions would be impossible to prevent, really."

Yes, but also pointless. All terrorist attacks have political reasons. A bunch of small scale attacks will further increase public awareness of the threat, thereby making it harder to do large scale attacks. And they have a limited amount of people especially in America which are willing to murder Americans and die in the process. And also each terrorist dying will have a trail which can be investigated. They don't want a trail leading back to the network which supports them. So basically they don't want "their members" killing say 10 or 20 American per terrorist.

In 911 they used 20 people who came from outside of America and their plan was to kill tens of thousands of civilians- they wanted a kill ratio of 1000 to 1. Plus have the blame go back to countries such as Saudi Arabia [a regime they hated].

"Why haven't they happened? Why is al Qaeda fighing in Iraq?

Maybe because one of their prime goals is to get US influence out of the Middle East?"

Yes, and their clearly stated purposes.

"Maybe because they figure if they can keep Bush sending troops and money there, they can go towards bankrupting the US?"

And unfortuately for them, we did not send a massive army over there as some people wanted. But what they *really, really" wanted was a massive army to be sent to Afghanistan. Or for us not to respond with any miltary action- or other words, wanting us to concede that we are unable to use miltarty power to stop them. Hence what is the purpose of having any miltary presence in the middle east? Answer, none. So leave.

"But I'm pretty sure it's not because they think they have their best chance of militarily beating the US by fighting them in Iraq, or that they can attain the downfall of Western Civilization by getting slaughtered in the streets of Baghdad."

Hell, they came pretty close. We almost had Kerry elected.

They KNOW they can't beat us in a war. But they have seen America leave areas, because Americans [or any free people] don't like war.
This has more to do with America than anything else- if we were eager for war, they would steer clear of using these tactics.
Americans don't like war, but big mistake to think American won't fight wars- if it's important enough and if there is the leadership that is willing to endure not being popular.

If Kerry had been elected, he would probably have tried to leave by last summer, but it's unknowable if he would actually have less troops in Iraq now or whether he could have finished out this term without sending them back [and fighting all the way back in] or what kind mess there would be over in the region of Iraq [Kurds declaring there independence, Turkey and Iran getting more involved. Or for instance, whether last summer Israel would have decided to launch an all out on Syria- who were acting as agents for Iran using Hezbollah as their proxies.

But even if Kerry could manage to get us out of Iraq and Iraq didn't implode. Iraqis flew kites. And Israel didn't have Hezbollah attack it. I mean everything just went like some terrific fantasy. This have still have encouraged the terrorists and they would have probably focused their attention on Afghanistan. And have weaken the resolve by all countries currently involved in Afghanistan. And it would very hard to imagine that Iran would suddenly decide not to make nuclear weapons and that there would much international will to put any sanction on Iran in order to stop them.