Scotland Yard Breaks Up Al Qaeda Plot Linked To Pakistan - Five Still Loose

by Steve

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Scotland Yard disrupted a major terrorist plot against trans-Atlantic flights inbound to the United States from Great Britain today, arresting 21 people who had planned to detonate carry-on items on as many as 10 inbound flights for America. As a result, both countries have increased their threat levels. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says that there is no indication that the plot involved attacks within the United States, which immediately makes me suspect the opposite.

Note that the suspects are all homegrown in Britain with ties to George W. Bush’s favorite partner in the war on terror, Pakistan, a country that continues to harbor Osama Bin Laden and A. Q. Khan. Also note that the Washington Post never mentions the Pakistani connection to these suspects. The plot appears to several terrorism experts to be an Al Qaeda follow up operation to the 9/11 attacks on the fifth anniversary, and the plotters appear to have been at work on this for months, calling into question exactly how well we have disrupted their ability to carry out coordinated attacks. Looks like that war in Iraq was a winner, huh?

The right wing bedwetters today have already started wailing about how this crisis shows why the country needs Bush and Joe Lieberman, although Bush and DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff are doing nothing extraordinary that any other president of either party wouldn’t have done also. But it blows a hole in that “we’re fighting them over there to keep from fighting them over here” defense, especially when the suspects have links to Pakistan, calling into question Bush’s unwavering support for a regime that, like Saudi Arabia, assists those who plan to harm us. And this was a plot hatched by Al Qaeda with Pakistani support, tracked and broken up by law enforcement using solid intelligence, impeded little if at all by a failed regime change and occupation of a sovereign state that had nothing to do with 9/11.

On two other related notes, two officials from Rummy’s stand-alone intelligence agency announced their resignations yesterday effective at the end of this month, apparently in response to the possibility that they handed out earmarked contracts to defense contractors like MZM’s Mitchell Wade, he of the Duke Cunningham scandal. And a college intern, working for the Federation of American Scientists, dissected the DHS website and found numerous examples of imprecise, confusing and dubious advice to the public about what to do in the event of a terrorist attack. In response, and in only two months, she constructed her own website that offers advice more up-to-date and to the point, at ReallyReady.com. ReallyReady.org. So one college intern was able in two months to do a better job than all of Chertoff’s highly paid GOP contract consultants. Go figure.

Update: Five of them are still loose, and a danger to implement the plot anyway. And, surprise, they are Pakistanis. Thanks Pervez.