Pakistan and the True WMD Threat

Terrorists with secular ambitions which they think they will achieve will hardly "take out" Manhattan with nuclear weapons; that kind of thing would thwart their own ambitions. Remember that al-Qaida and it´s affiliates are not hoping for an Armageddon nor for the destruction of the US; what they want is to make US leave the Middle East and stop it´s support for regimes they oppose, which would make tumbling them easier and would make their own rise to power possible.

They don´t want to kill as many people as they can. They are not humanitarians, but they have clear goals and more or less realistic plans how to achieve them. And blowing up a city in the US will hardly make US flee in terror from the Middle East and the Central Asia, whereas a long war of attrition that bin Laden has spoken of could make both the US populace and political leadership weary of their presence in the area, especially if it´s importance for US economy will diminish in the future.