What Might Have Been

JFK Plot: What Might Have Been
By Rich Lowry

Before the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, al Qaeda targeted another U.S. destroyer. It wanted to hit the USS The Sullivans. But as recounted in Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Looming Tower, the terror operatives overloaded their skiff with C-4 explosives, causing it to sink harmlessly into the surf.

They had to shoo away Yemeni locals who discovered the boat and started throwing the C-4 bricks around. Anyone discovering the operatives at that moment would have concluded that they were buffoons whose ambition to sink an American ship of war far exceeded their capabilities. Of course, nine months later, they nearly succeeded, blowing a 40-feet-by-40-feet hole in the Cole, killing 17 sailors.
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