Is the UK conspiracy a hoax?
keithvanhorn
3,855 Posts
Taken from an article posted August 16, 2006 in the Nation. Groundhog Day James K. Galbraith Let's see... It's August. Bush is in Crawford on a "working vacation." His polls are in the tank. Congress is in revolt. The economy is going soft. The next elections don't look good. Cheney is off in Wyoming, or wherever he goes. It's 2001. No, it's 2006. In The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx reports that "Hegel writes somewhere" that the great events of history tend to occur twice, first as tragedy and then as farce. On September 11, nineteen hijackers commandeered four airplanes and succeeded in killing some 3,000 people. On August 10, we are told, British authorities upended a suicide-murder plot aimed at destroying twelve airplanes, killing everyone on board including the bombers, possibly with more fatalities than on 9/11. As a senior British police official put it, "This was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale." From all official statements so far, we are led to believe that August 10 was a highly developed, far-advanced conspiracy, under surveillance for some time, which could have been put into action within just a few days. And perhaps 8/10 really was the biggest thing since 9/11. But then again, perhaps it wasn't. We don't know yet. And it's not too early to ask the questions on which final judgment must depend. Well, then. Here is a checklist of some things we should shortly be hearing about. Bombs. Chemicals. Detonators. Labs. A testing ground. Airline tickets. Passports. Witnesses. Suspicious neighbors. Suspicious parents. Suspicious friends. Threats. Confessions. Let me spell this out: By definition, you cannot bomb an aircraft unless you have a bomb. In this case, we are told that there were no bombs; rather, the conspirators planned to bring on board the makings of a bomb: chemicals and a detonator. These would be mixed on board. Exactly what the chemicals were remains unclear. Nitroglycerin has been suggested, but it's too likely to go off on the way to the airport. TATP, made of acetone and peroxide, has been suggested, but there are two problems. One is that the peroxide required is highly concentrated--it's not the 3 percent solution from the drugstore. The other is that acetone is highly volatile. As anyone who flies knows, you can't open a bottle of nail polish remover on an airplane without everyone within twenty feet knowing at once. It's possible to imagine one truly dedicated and competent bomber pulling this off. But it is impossible to imagine twenty-four untrained people between the ages of 17 and 35 all getting away with the same trick at once. So, there must have been training. That means there must be a lab, or labs. There must have been trial bombs. There must be various bits and pieces of equipment used to mix the chemicals and set them off. There must be a manual. There must be a testing ground. And each one of the young men under arrest must have been to these places. Interestingly, it must have all happened, too, without a serious accident, injury or death among the conspirators. If so, they are a lot more competent than the Weather Underground ever was, in my day. Arrests were made at night, catching the culprits at home. Houses have been raided, and are being searched. So far as we know at this point, no bombs have been found. No chemicals. No equipment. No labs. No testing ground. Maybe this will come out later, but it hasn't so far, even though the authorities seem anxious to tell just about everything they know. Now, in order to get on an airplane, even the most devout suicide terrorist needs a ticket, and these generally must be purchased with money. Apparently, not one ticket had been purchased by the detainees. One little-known feature of airline security (in the United States, anyway) is that people traveling on one-way tickets bought at the last minute get special scrutiny at the gate. Those tickets are also (a lot) more expensive. If you want to pass unnoticed, you will buy your ticket round-trip, in advance, and also save money like everyone else. Actually, if you didn't know this already, you're not fit to be let out of the house. Further, to get on an international flight from Britain to the United States, in these days of the modern nation-state, you need something else. It's a document called a passport. Apparently, some of the detainees don't have them. Someone lacking a passport can, I think, safely be excluded from the ranks of potential suicide bombers of UK-to-US flights. They could, of course, have a counterfeit or be operating in a support role--but so far we are not being told of any counterfeit documents or any support operation. And to pass security you would use a different person to carry each chemical you needed. For twelve flights, that's twenty-four people. As for the suspicious parents, friends and neighbors--it's technically possible that the bombers' security was so excellent that none existed. It's just that, in dealing with young people swept up in a fervor of religious hatred, the odds are extremely low. Of all the Islamic groups, Hezbollah in Lebanon is the only one that maintains effective military security, which it does by isolating its fighters as completely as possible from the civilian population. But these young men were picked up at home; they were well-known and yet apparently suspected by no one at all. As to threats: A joke going around the Manchester Airport on August 10 was that at least the IRA would remember to call. What's the point of a suicide bombing if no one knows what it's for? The downing of twelve airplanes would be horrific to those on them (including me, as it happened), but it wouldn't put a dent in Western capitalism. It would have to be part of a much larger, ongoing, unstoppable campaign. Otherwise, why bother? A once-off attack shows the weakness, not the capacity, of the plotters, and in the end it strengthens not them but the governments they attack. After 9/11, terrorists should know this. Finally, confessions. Twenty-four suspects have been arrested, according to some reports. Nineteen have been named. Happily, the detainees were taken alive. Unlike the man arrested in Pakistan, we may presume (I trust) that they are not being tortured. Therefore, they will have a chance to make an uncoerced statement of their intentions in open court. By then the authorities will have found the labs, testing grounds, airline tickets and passports. Credible witnesses too will have emerged. By then the young zealots will have no expectation of acquittal or mercy, and nothing to lose. We may therefore confidently expect them to face the judges and declare exactly what their motives and intentions were. If they do that, I'll eat my hat. In short: Could this case blow up? Could it turn out to have been an overreaction, a mistake--or even a hoax? Yes, it could, and it wouldn't be the first one, either. I'm not saying it will, necessarily. I'm not accusing the British authorities of bad faith. I'm not suggesting the plot was faked--at least, not by them. But dodgy informants and jumpy politicians are an explosive mixture, easily detonated under pressure. Everyone knows that.
Comments
"We blow shit up for fun".
It wasn't nothing knew.
Bingo.
At this point, the Bush administration has squandered every shred of credibility it might've had. There seems to be a pathological hatred of being honest and forthright in the administration, so when a group with no credibility makes claims such as this, the burden of proof falls entirely on that group. You say this is a plot, well, let's see the proof, guys.
Understand, I don't like thinking the government would lie about something like this, but after so many years of fundamental dishonesty, my default setting is Extreme Suspicion. If they really did bust up a terror plot, then fuckin' good on 'em. But nobody who's been paying attention should be taking statements from this administration at face value.
Top al Qaeda Man In Pakistan Nabbed
August 17, 2006 9:31 AM
Gretchen Peters and Habibullah Khan Report:
A senior al Qaeda commander allegedly tied to the London airplane bomb plot has been arrested in Pakistan, Pakistani intelligence and law enforcement officials have told ABC News. Matiur Rehman, one of the most wanted men in Pakistan, is known to have met with the alleged plot ringleader Rashid Rauf, according to the officials.
Rehman???s capture could provide the most important leads in months to the whereabouts of Al Qaeda???s top two leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri. Rehman was believed to be in frequent contact with Zawahiri.
Rehman was taken into custody in the southern Punjab city of Bawalpur, the same town where alleged London plot ringleader Rashid Rauf was arrested last week. ABC News saw a copy of the police report on Rehman, with an attached copy of his photo.
Pakistani officials told ABC News earlier that 29-year Rehman was known to be planning a terror spectacular to mark the fifth anniversary of the 9/ll attacks, and the London plot may have been it.
ABC News consultant Alexis Debat, a terrorism expert at the Nixon Center in Washington D.C., says, "[Rehman] is the interface between al Qaeda's leadership and thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Pakistani militants who are able to provide the muscle for al Qaeda's operations not only in Pakistan but around the world."
Ditto. Remember when Abu Zubaydah was a "major Al Qaeda operative" b/w "one of the leaders of Al Qaeda" and his capture was repeatedly trotted out by Bushies as proof that their policies were working? Yeah, funny thing about that...Zubaydah was in fact a mentally ill man whose Al Qaeda affiliation never rose higher than the rank of travel agent. But we sure waterboarded the shit out of him! And it made us safer! Really!
Abu Zubaydah was a little more than just some retard that got tortured into confessing he was Al Queda. I can understand being skeptical, but thats just denying reality.
Well, look, the Bush administration trumpeted him as a major player in Al Qaeda. This guy was a real mover and shaker, according to Bush. "One of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States" is Bush's own description of the man. Remember that: A top operative plotting and planning death and destruction.
What was he in reality? A mentally ill man with split personalities who in fact did absolutely zero in terms of plotting, planning, creating strategy, or orchestrating attacks and in fact generally knew nothing about AQ stategy. He handled minor logistics--travel plans, mostly, and not even for actual AQ operatives, but for their wives and children. That's it. That's the reality. He had no useful information to offer, though, again, we waterboarded the shit out of him, and then, surprise surprise, he started telling us what he thought we wanted to hear, just plain making shit up to get us to stop torturing him.
Bush presented him as a general in the Al Qaeda army. That's the lie. And that's the kind of shit that makes me very wary of pretty much any Bush statement regarding the war on terror.
fucking eat my dick all day again.wait, something's different? you're so calm. reasoned.
OMG!
Are you seeing somebody else?
I think the major variable here is that many of these "plots" were uncovered months and even years before they were rolled out to the press and the public. Tom Ridge is on record (now! sigh.) saying many warnings, increases in the terror threat color level and shit were baseless.
Fucking Christ! The color terror threat coding system? Easily the dumbest shit EVAR.
the "uk plot" was suspicious from the very beginning. i think the author of this article nailed down the biggest question marks:
no passports.
no plane tickets.
no explanation of how this (practically) would work. mixing liquids on the plane?
no labs. no testing.
not even a tentative date for when this would happen.
and....no more details?
if and when these "conspirators" are charged with actual crimes and given an actual trial, we might re-evaluate these suspicions. for now, this entire plot is beyond
so you think they should wait until they hear a definite date or how it would "practically" work before taking any action to try to prevent it?
no. i think that people all across the world are technically "plotting" to do a lot of terrible things. the issue here is whether this plot had any chance of ever becoming reality. all signs point to a strong HELL NO at this point and meanwhile, Bush is on tv acting like he just stopped the next 9-11...and moments before it was about to happen. we banned all liquids on planes. why? because the plot which never happened mentioned the use of liquids...even though, as this article points out, mixing liquids to make a bomb while on-board is a ludicrous propisition. hundreds of passengers are gonna sit around while you mix up a bomb????????
I don't think it's an outright hoax, but like KVH said, Bush is acting like he headed off the next 9/11 mere moments before it was to take place, and that view seems pretty unsupportable by the facts. Again, this thing is entirely too political to take at face value--particularly when "the war on terror" (whatever that may be) is about the only possible strong suit the chief prosecutor of this war (Bush) has left.
There's a fundamental disconnect between the administration's rhetoric and the truth of the matter, and it has been that way ever since the administration started making overtures about attacking Iraq. The administration wants to play up any victory as being much bigger than it is and downplay any defeat as not really being a defeat (has Bush even admitted to any mistakes--any at all--in this whole debacle?). It wants to distort intelligence, squelch contrary findings, and generally keep people toeing the party line rather than properly informed. Why? Politics.
This situation reminds me not only of Zubaydah and how Bush's rhetoric didn't at all match reality, but of that "terrorist ring" in Miami that was "plotting an attack." Remember them? Turns out they were a bunch of clueless fucks who were long on angry, undoable ideas and extremely short on any sort of ability.
Like I said above, Bush and his administration has bankrupted its supply of benefit of the doubt because for close to five years, it has played fast and loose with the facts, tried to spin reality into a GOP-friendly talking point, and generally done what it can to obfuscate the real nature of things. Fool me once...shame on...shame on you. Fool me twice...can't...can't fool me again.
first of all, you are assuming that those 3 inconspicuous terrorists sitting side-by-side had passports and plane tickets to even get on the plane.....which they didn't. second, you are assuming that they knew how to mix the liquids...and right now there is no evidence of any labs, or of any prior experiments or even experience. finally, are you f*cking serious? three terrorists are gonna mix up a bomb in an airplane's shitter???? its impossible to even pee straight in an airplane bathroom.
whether this was a hoax or just a far-fetched plot, is up in the air. however, the last thing the evidence points to (so far), is an actual plot that had even the slightest chance of becoming a reality.
also the whole "has Bush admitted any mistakes" line is fucking ludicrous, NO presidents admit to mistakes, and if you expect them to you're living in some fantasy world.
if you believe this, you are living in a world without books, newspapers or televisions.
BREAKING NEWS: Explosive Substances Believed to be Found at Tri-State Airport
Live Streaming link
Tri State Airport Evacuated
By: WSAZ NewsChannel 3
Tri-State Airport in Wayne County has been evacuated. A perimeter has been set up, and evacuees are being asked to stand back 350 feet from the airport.
The Transportation Security Administration reports that a passenger's water bottle screened positive for an explosive material around 9:15 this morning. A second test was confirmed at 11:25. TSA is waiting for further testing to determine the exact substance.
NBC News reports that federal screeners found four containers of liquids inside a woman's carry-on bag during the screening process this morning. Larry Salyers, Tri-State Airport Director, tells WSAZ the woman is of Pakistani origin, lived in Jackson, Michigan and most recently lived in the Huntington area. She is being detained for questioning
WTF is this paragraph about?
EXACTLY!!!
dudes get all secret knowledge, apparently you have to watch keith olbermann with 3-D glasses to get it
I think youve got it back to front. Its if they are released without charge that should cause you to dismiss the suspicions about a hoax. If youre going to falsibly implicate people for political gain then it becomes a matter of neccesity for those people to be convicted. Otherwise you only succede in diminishing your credibility.
Suitcase full of bomb equipment found by police
By Stewart Tendler, Sean O???Neill and Zahid Hussain
A SUITCASE filled with bomb-making material has been found by police teams investigating the alleged plot to blow up aircraft over the Atlantic.
The suitcase, containing chemicals and other equipment for a home-made bomb, was found in woods in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, close to addresses at which suspects were arrested last week.
A police source said that the suitcase contained everything that would be needed to make an explosive device. This could include materials for creating an explosive, methods of concealment and a simple way of detonating the bomb. After police made arrests last week, Whitehall sources said it was feared that the explosives were to have been hidden in plastic drinks bottles and ignited using the current from an MP3 player. Details of the find have been kept secret by Scotland Yard and the suitcase is now being examined by forensic scientists and explosives experts.
you mean SS doesn't have all the info?? the NERVE of that Scotland Yard!!!
anyway, the beauty of being a paranoid freak and shutting your common sense off is that it doesn't matter what evidence they find or how much, it can all be incorporated into the conspiracy. "WTF there's no evidence" then becomes "yeah of course there's evidence, that's how they get people to believe their lies!!" and you just keep on truckin'.
so thats all it takes to convince you that this "sophisticated plot" was the next 9-11....a report that a suitcase was found in the same neighborhood as one of the suspects???
people have dozens of reasons to be suspicious of "8-10". start out with the lack of evidence and then factor in bush and blair's poll numbers and the fact that both of them have spent the past 5 years preaching about the war on terror.
the whitehouse pushed this story, calling it the next 9-11, and they obviously thought they would benefit from it. november elections are coming up and bush was at his lowest approval rating (33%).
one theory is that the entire plot is a hoax. another, possibly more likely theory, is just that this was one of many half-assed plots that had no chance of ever coming to fruition. bush and blair got together and decided to make it more than it was for their own benefit. also, are you guys forgetting about the "florida plot" a few months ago? groundhog day is right.
hey mr. strawman, show me where i said it was a sophisticated plot or the next 9/11. all i said was banning liquids is a very tiny inconvenience and i don't think a "sophisticated plot" or full-blown plan should be required to make that call. If they had credible intelligence that it was being discussed I think it's a reasonable precaution to take.
and regarding this:
i'm not even sure what you mean by that, but show me where a sitting president has apologized or admitted mistakes.