The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?

[mhatrw]

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2006/08/the_uk_terror_p.html

...

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time. In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests. Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.

...

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled. We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.

...

We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the "Loner" profile you would expect - a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have happy marriages and young children. As they were all under surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity - that is certainly what we would have done with the IRA.

In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few - just over two per cent of arrests - who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered.

[donco6]

1. Wow.

"Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few - just over two per cent of arrests - who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered."

And we wonder why they get pissed.

[yodermon]

13. Well, they're trying to provoke an attack.

Then they can claim "terrorism".
You think we did Abu Ghraib & Gitmo by accident?
It's a recipe for endless war, and the war profiteers shall profit.

[babylonsister]

2. Sickening. They inconvenience millions for their political gains. nt

[leftofthedial]

3. US domestic politics

same as the rest of the war on terra.

[file83]

4. Sounds like Chicken Little and the Boy Who Cried Wolf are at it again...

:eyes:

Excellent article! :thumbsup:

[leveymg]

5. Why do we allow politicians to run counter-terrorism operations?

We don't trust Presidents to control the money supply, so we have the Federal Reserve Board.

Similarly, we allow the military to put forward its own list for appointment to top leadership, rather than have political appointees do that.

Why, unlike other critical functions such as defense and bank oversight, we allow counter-terrorism be a politically-driven process is beyond me. See, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1922739&mesg_id=1922739

[BooScout]

6. And racism in the UK & US escalates with each.......

...and every alledged threat.....I have seen it each time. A backlash against the Muslim community and the backlash doesn't fade away as they drop the charges on each alledged terrorist either. Another sad side effect of what the Bushes, Blair, Cheneys and Reids are doing to us all.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. For instance: Racist threat before mosque arson

Police investigating an arson attack on a mosque are looking into threats made to occupants of a nearby property.

Three hours before the Albirr Mosque was set alight on Saturday, a man tried to force his way into a property in Goat Lane, Basingstoke.

Hampshire police said the man made racist and religious remarks to those inside and references to recent anti-terror arrests in London.

Detectives are "keeping an open mind" about the two events being connected.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/4797607.stm

[dipsydoodle]

7. only twelve per cent are ever charged

I'd have put the figure lower than that. I'd concluded that a lot of those detained are eventually released on condition they keep their mouths shut. If anything I'd say their constant harrassment here in the UK is bringing others closer to them out of empathy.

[EstimatedProphet]

9. But it's all real, of course!

It has to be real! After all, the British police wouldn't release this information just because Bush wanted it to be released! Why should they care what political happennings were going on in the US?

:sarcasm::sarcasm::sarcasm::sarcasm:

Even though we now know that the Bush administration leaned on Britain to release the information early, before they were ready, ruining the investigation and against their requests...

[mhatrw]

10. The Brits Are Very "Sceptical."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1851078,00.html

It was not in horror or panic that thousands of ordinary people contacted the BBC or posted points on the Guardian's Comment is Free website in the hours after last week's terror plot. The mood of many seemed to be one of profound caution, even scepticism, over the allegations of a murderous scheme in which 50 people would try to bring down up to 20 planes between Britain and America. Almost a week later, and after a downgrading of the terrorist threat, what do ordinary voters now think of those excitable early briefings by John Reid, the home secretary, and Scotland Yard's dramatically voiced belief that it had foiled "mass murder on an unimaginable scale"? Are people still sceptical?

...

Scepticism about the plot is shared by many in the area and not just by Muslims, says Qurban Hussain, a local resident and the deputy leader of Luton borough council. "People are definitely sceptical. They are not sure whether these claims are just to clamp down on British Muslims. Is it scaremongering tactics by the government or another reason to harass more innocent people? It's a perception held by a lot of my constituents of all backgrounds. When you look back on the WMD, the information was wrong. Then we have the case of Jean Charles de Menezes. We picked up the wrong person altogether. Then the raid in Forest Gate in which a man was shot. There are so many cases people can refer to. It makes them feel they cannot trust the government."

...

Stopping at the motorway services just north of Luton, John Jeffreys is unsure whether he trusts the government's line. "It's difficult to know. A lot of these terror alerts seem to coincide with an announcement about ID cards for instance. This time there obviously was some sort of plot but we don't know how significant it was. I don't trust the government at all. There's no doubt that Blair lied about the weapons of mass destruction before Iraq."

"It's propaganda, isn't it?" chips in his mate, Mick Perrone, 31. "It gets the whole nation on alert."

[mhatrw]

11. Kick. n/t

[Mr_Spock]

12. Children are going to be studying "what went wrong - the Bush years"

for decades to come.

This makes Nixon & McCarthy look like the "good old days".