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UK Airline Plot: No Shock and No Surprise
By Maj P
By now I assume all in our listening audience have seen the reports on the UK airline plot. Shocked and surprised, are you? You shouldn't be. This is all dog-bites-manstuff. The sole rational individual reaction should be anger first, then a brief sigh of relief, and then cold calculated rage. A similar electoral reaction ought to follow as well, but we'll see about that. This is a war, folks, and it is being fought on many fronts. Don't mistake it for anything else but WAR.
I'll add just one link, Michelle Malkin's coverage, because you will get most if not all of what you need to read from there.
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Comments
The August 22nd link is indeed worrying. The multiple bombing is a trademark of Al Qaeda, they love that sort of thing, and the complexity of mixing compounds in flight would seem to similarly point to sophisticated planning and intelligent operatives, two things that in the past point to Al Qaeda planners.
Before you start rollicking me with "Al Qaeda is a network, not a group" type stuff, let me say that I understand all that. Al Qaeda does pick which ops to support logistically though, and it likes the grand effect multiple bombings.
There's something we're not hearing here. I'm suspicious. In every news report people are talking about how big a catastrophe this would have been, how this is the "big one". I don't buy it. 10 planes, 200-300 people each. Okay, we're talking 3,000 dead as an upper bound. It's a 9/11 without the structural destruction. It's bad, real bad, but it could be a lot worse. Anyone else think there's something we're not hearing?
The Brit officials are not given to melodramatic statements, so "unimaginable" loss of life, or however he put it, struck me too. Also, merely blowing up some planes mid air seems to be of lesser showmanship than was bringing down the Twin Towers.
Can we so sure the bombs were to go off in mid-air and not over NY, Boston....?
The language they've been using, "catastrophic" "unimaginable" etc., is on a par with what WMD usually prompts.
UPDATE
Reports this afternoon seem to be focusing the D-Day window towards the 22nd. "Dry run" the next two days and then you don't want to wait too long to execute (simple OPSEC).
William, perhaps a double punch is lurking out there. Recruitment seems up. Two separate efforts may be possible. And some refuse to believe we are at war!
Today goes to show that police action, instead of military action, should take the lead in defending the free world from terrorism.
The NYPD has done some very interesting counter-terror work in recent years, a fair amount of it prodded by the Manhattan Institute's Center for Policing Terror.
I think both play a role. Domestically, obviously law enforcement has to take the lead and play an active role. Abroad, I think we need a robust power projection capability, perhaps more in line with the special forces model than the big gun approach the useful life of which seems to be ending, but robust nonetheless.
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1) "Advanced" plot - wonder what D-Day was? August 22? If so, look for latent prints leading ultimately to Iran and perhaps Hezbollah.
2) Is rendition really wrong? It's our asses on the line. I'm sure as you plunge towards the surface of the Atlantic, your last thoughts will be "we are just to all humanity!" and you'll feel alot better.