It's crazy to say it Some people might construe this as an offensive parallel, but I'll say it anyway. More and more, this sniper thing reminds me of Grand Theft Auto 3. In the game, as you commit increasing levels of mayhem (hijacking cars, gunning down civilians, blowing stuff up, etc.), the forces deployed against you by law enforcement get stronger and stronger:

At a star rating of one, police seem to not worry too much about you and you may get a policeman on foot chasing you around. Once you get to two stars, the police will start to try and disable your vehicle and arrest you. From there on up it gets really messy. At three stars they really start shooting at you and they send in a helicopter to follow you as you try to make your way across town. You'll constantly be hit by the police trying to stop your vehicle, and you may also run into roadblocks. At four stars, the police tend to bring out their swat trucks. Though they are slow, they pack a mean hit. Five stars and you got the FBI on you, and holy sh!t, they f*ck you up bad!

And the final star level - 6 stars - means that they call in the military. Just like they've done in DC! I never thought I'd see this sort of thing playing out in real life. I wonder if the terrorists (and I'm pretty sure they are terrorists now, and that there is more than one of them) plan to start blowing shit up and gunning down police officers? That would be surreal...but then again, Al Qaeda has trained for just this sort of thing...