Thursday, August 17, 2006

Terror Attacks Foiled (Revised)

The Dog's loyal readers need not be reminded of his deep and abiding skepticism toward most matters, great and small, although he can't match Beckett's skepticism toward the completeness of his own birth. For now, let it be said that today, approximately a week into MI5's and Scotland Yard's takedown of the terriors plotting to bring down 10 or so British to U.S. flights, using "liquid bombs" manufactured over the Atlantic, he remains as unconvinced as he was on first hearing the news. So where to begin--

--The timing of the bust, hard on the heels of primary election setbacks, most notably, it would appear, the pompous Joe Lieberman, diehard supporter of the slaughter in Iraq, not to mention continued bad news out of that American colony and the battering the Bushies were taking over their approval of the Israel attacks on civilians in Lebanon and the 5th anniversary of the Emperor Boy George's first August briefing, which he ignored, the timing sucks. There are indeed scattered reports that the arrests came when they did at the behest of the Bushbuckers. This detail alone is enough to make the Dog discount the whole sordid deal, but there is more.

--The beauty of using British agencies MI5 and Scotland Yard, which still have some credibility in the eyes of many Americans, who have no faith in their own FBI, the gang that spawned the Liberty City 7. Is that faith well placed? Consider that the Brits themselves seem skeptical of the threat posed by the "liquid bombers" and that Tony Blair is widely and correctly perceived as the Emperor Boy's Boy. In the excellent Seymour Hersh piece in the current New Yorker on the Bushies' approval of and collusion with Israel in its misbegotten attack on Hizbollah, a British offiicial is quoted that Blair "drinks the White House Kool-Aid as much as anyone in Washington." (For those who don't remember or were too young, here's the Wiki entry on Jim Jones and the People's Temple.) Every indication is that Bushy and Blair worked together on this one.

--Thanks to Wikipedia, I can provide some material and links on liquid explosives--acetone peroxide, aka "Mother of Satan" and hexamethylene triperoxide damine. Both are described as easy to manufacture favorites of terriors. Either or neither might have been used in last July's attack in London's tube. But "easy to manufacture" does not mean safe. They are highly volatile, which is why amatuers regularly blow themselves up, at least partly. Acetone peroxide is apparently best made at cold temperatures. Because they are unstable, it's a little hard to see all of these 24 bumblers conducting their chemisty experiments successfully on the fly. They were more likely to blow up the toilet than down the plane. In other words, they made a bad choice of weapons.

--But then, there is scant proof that these 24 people in England and some 26 more elsewhere actually had the capacity to do more. It increasingly appears that they were at best wannabes, perhaps slightly more together than the Libery City 7, perhaps. More than a few didn't even have passports.

--The purported mastermind in Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the putative al Qaeda number three whom the Pakistanis arrested last spring and turned over to the Americans for water boarding. It's been reported numerous times that the U.S. has the wrong dude. I suppose he masterminded this thing through telepathy with Rashid Rauf, as the Guardian reports today. So what, if the right al-Libbi's in isolation, he set this thing in motion more than a year ago and left it to Rauf, who seems largely feeble, but al-Libbi didn't spill the beans on this one despite torture. This trail gets too hard for the Dog to follow, but then all he's expected to do is follow the police and intelligence work of our friends in the UK and Pakistan.

--The terriors don't have to launch attacks anymore. They can scare the hell out of people simply by talking about an attack.

I'll post this draft, proof read, and add to it later. Now the Dog must see to the Dogs.

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