Better numbers on how many Muslim warriors we face?

A few weeks ago I speculated on how many Islamic extremists had a desire to kill us. Now Newt Gingrich gives us his numbers:

According to the former speaker, between 39 million and 52 million young men — out of a total of 1.3 billion Muslims around the world — could become available to Islamist recruiters as the war on terror grinds on.

My numbers were much larger but included not just “young men” but everyone that had a desire to kill us.  Still, assuming Gingrich is right, even accounting for the differences in who is being counted I was way off.  I would love to know the method by which he arrived at those numbers.  But regardless, 40 to 50 million warriors are a lot.  I’m not sure that even with the kill ratios we have that our country will tolerate the military losses and the money spent to defeat that large of force until the Muslims attack us on our own soil again.  Will we be attacked again on our own soil?  I don’t know.  I suspect so.  The elections in Iraq have to be the first priority of the Muslims, then attacking us at home.  We could see an attack in this country by the end of this month.

But then I read some speculation that Osama bin Laden had been told we would nuke, literally use nuclear weapons on, Mecca if there was another attack of 9/11 proportions on U.S. soil.  Assuming that is true, would that be a deterrent?  Or would that be a price worth paying to recruit millions of Jihad warriors?

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