London Terror Mystery

[xiinfaniin]

My sympathy and sorrow goes out the innocent victims of this war.

Glad to know that SOL nomads in particular and other nomads in London are safe.

 

------------------------------------------------

July 7, 2005

London Terror Mystery

What did Bibi know – and when did he know it?

by Justin Raimondo

 

London's Terror Thursday establishes three realities beyond the shadow of a doubt: (1) the West is losing the "war on terrorism," (2) in our present strategic mode, we are essentially defenseless against al-Qaeda's offensive – I agree with Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit and author of Imperial Hubris, who said on National Public Radio that this is undoubtedly al-Qaeda's grisly work, and (3) there are more than two sides in this war.

 

With the G-8 meeting being held in Scotland, security measures in the United Kingdom were at an all-time high – and yet, despite that, al-Qaeda pulled off a fairly complex operation, involving four separate bombings, three underground trains and one bus, which was peeled away from its chassis like an opened can of beans, as one witness described it. Indeed, the London attacks have opened up a very big can of worms for Blair's government, and in Washington too, where they're realizing that the "fly trap" tactic they've been employing in Iraq has backfired rather badly.

 

If the Brits couldn't prevent such a sophisticated and highly coordinated attack at a time like this – when the meeting of the G-8 had British security on high alert – then one can only conclude, along with Scheuer, that the terrorists held back, and could have caused far more damage and taken many more lives if they so chose. Perhaps that thought is meant to sink into the British consciousness. The terrorists' message is clear enough: your government can't protect you. This much seems beyond dispute.

 

The second message may be gleaned from the statement of responsibility for the attacks, which appeared on a jihadist Web site that has been utilized by al-Qaeda on previous occasions to make announcements. Here is screenshot of the message posted shortly after the attacks, and here is a translation, courtesy of Wikipedia:

 

"In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate, may be upon the cheerful one and undaunted fighter, Prophet Muhammed, God's peace be upon him.

 

"Nation of Islam and Arab nation: Rejoice for it is time to take revenge against the British Zionist crusader government in retaliation for the massacres Britain is committing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The heroic mujahideen have carried out a blessed raid in London. Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters.

 

"We have repeatedly warned the British government and people. We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid in Britain after our mujahideen exerted strenuous efforts over a long period of time to ensure the success of the raid.

 

"We continue to warn the governments of Denmaark and all the crusader governments that they will be punished in the same way if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. He who warns is excused.

 

"God says: 'You who believe: If ye will aid (the cause of) God, He will aid you, and plant your feet firmly.'"

 

Bin Laden's message to Muslims is that the West, far from being invulnerable, can be defeated. His primary target remains the U.S., not Britain or any of the other countries mentioned in the claim of responsibility, and his chief objective is to get us out of the Middle East. The jihadist mindset is eerily similar to that of our own leaders, and their neoconservative amen corner, who continue to advance the proposition that we must fight "the terrorists" in the streets of Baghdad so we don't have to do battle in the streets of London, Rome, and New York City. Bush declares that "we are going on the offensive," but, as I pointed out only last week, so are they:

 

"The President gloats that 'we're on the offense' – and explicitly justifies this on the grounds that we have to go after them before they go after us. Yet why it is impossible for them to attack the U.S. [Ed: or the UK] anyway, even while fighting American troops in Iraq, no one seems to know."

 

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction: while the Islamists cannot begin to bring the sort of firepower that we wield in Iraq to bear in the streets of London, they can, over time, create conditions where a stiff upper lip is not enough. At that point – or, hopefully, well before then – the Brits, and indeed all of us in the West, are going to have to make a cold calculation of the costs and the benefits of invading the Middle East. Is it worth the high price we must pay, or is it time to come up with a strategy a bit more sophisticated than shaking the tree in which the hornets' nest sits – in the hope that it will eventually fall to the ground?

 

If the answer is yes, it is worth it, then we must be prepared to do what the War Party has been urging since 9/11: abolishing for the duration many of the freedoms we now enjoy and signing on to a foreign policy of perpetual war against much of the Muslim world. Aside from taxing ourselves into penury and instituting a military draft, this means basically shutting down the relatively free society we have been living in and replacing it with a garrison state, one in which freedom of movement, of privacy, of the right to not be tracked by the government 24/7 goes the way of the horse-and-buggy, spats, and the music of Tommy Dorsey.

 

To answer "no," however, is to take the path of what the War Party derides as "appeasement" – in spite of the reality that our present policy is an invaluable aid to bin Laden and his cohorts. Against the tidal wave of emotion – a good deal of it cheap histrionics – the advocates of a rational foreign policy will have to fight an uphill battle, at least for the moment. However, when the dust clears, and common sense sets in, the backlash against the Blair government is sure to rise up: after all, the Israelis claimed – at least at one point – that the Brits warned them of the attack "minutes" in advance. The British authorities, for their part, deny any such warning – as the Israelis are now doing, at least offfically.

 

The first Associated Press story about a warning received by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu said this:

 

"British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said. Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said. …

 

"Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say they had received warnings of possible attacks, the official said. He did not say whether British police made any link to the economic conference. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of his position."

 

In subsequent versions of the same story, all references to the call from Scotland Yard have been scrubbed, and we are told that Netanyahu received the warning after the blasts. This instant revisionism was duly noted by the blogosphere. It took them a while to get their story straight – and I'm not talking about the Associated Press.

 

So when did Netanyahu receive his warning – and who warned whom? Stratfor.com circulated an interesting analysis shortly after the first stories began to come out: Although several news reports had Netanyahu on his way to the conference, Stratfor avers that he simply stayed put. Also noted is Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's denial that Scotland Yard informed the Israeli Embassy of the attacks in advance, with the Brits echoing this "clarification," but Stratfor has the supposed scoop:

 

"Contrary to original claims that Israel was warned 'minutes before' the first attack, unconfirmed rumors in intelligence circles indicate that the Israeli government actually warned London of the attacks 'a couple of days' previous. Israel has apparently given other warnings about possible attacks that turned out to be aborted operations. The British government did not want to disrupt the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, or call off visits by foreign dignitaries to London, hoping this would be another false alarm.

 

"The British government sat on this information for days and failed to respond. Though the Israeli government is playing along publicly, it may not stay quiet for long. This is sure to apply pressure on Blair very soon for his failure to deter this major terrorist attack."

 

I would also point out that Stratfor, with its passion for reiterating the obvious, stated in its summary that "there has been massive confusion" over the warning – confusion generated by whom, and to what purpose, is best left to the fertile imaginations of my readers.

 

The Stratfor piece puts the best spin on this story, at least from the Israeli point of view. If word that Netanyahu had a warning got out, then the best way to salvage it – and even score a few brownie points in the process – is to float the story that the warning was received not minutes but days before the attacks, and that the recipient of those warnings was not Netanyahu but the British government. Taking the focus off the eternal "war on terrorism," and trying to solve the problems of world poverty and global warning, the British government deliberately downplayed the threat, even ignored it – in spite of Israel's best efforts.

 

And if you believe that, there's a bridge in Brooklyn you may be interested in purchasing.

 

Netanyahu was no doubt a target of the bomb plot – why else would the terrorists bomb an underground station directly below the hotel where the investment conference was going to take place? If Israeli intelligence knew about the attacks days in advance, and only thought to let Netanyahu in on the secret "minutes" before the bombs went off – well, that's a little hard to believe, now isn't it? (Oh, wait … maybe not.)

 

I don't believe that Scotland Yard knew diddly-squat about the terror plot, either days or minutes before the bombs exploded, although what seems beyond dispute is that Netanyahu was warned beforehand. The question is, who warned him?

 

My longtime readers know that the question of how much the Israelis knew about 9/11 before those planes ploughed into the World Trade Center, and how they knew it, has been taken up in this space on many previous occasions. My short book, The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection, shows that Israel wasn't behind the 9/11 attacks, as many in the Arab world allege, but that they did have some knowledge that a terrorist attack was about to take place on American soil and somehow neglected to tell us about it. A controversial thesis, to be sure, and one that has caused me no small amount of trouble, perhaps understandably so. I would submit, however, that in this instance, too, the same pattern seems to be repeating itself – and that this goes a long way toward vindicating the thesis initially presented by Fox News reporter Carl Cameron in a four-part series broadcast in December 2001, and elaborated on by me in The Terror Enigma.

 

When you think about it, the idea that Netanyahu may have had advance warning of the attacks isn't all that improbable. Israel, after all, depends for its survival on the ability of its intelligence services to track Osama bin Laden and his allies worldwide. However, the decision to share that intelligence with Israel's ostensible allies in the "war on terrorism" cannot be taken for granted; and surely the choice not to do so, in the case of both New York and London, can be easily understood in terms of Israeli interests.

 

Who benefits from the London attacks, aside from the obvious candidate, which is bin Laden? With the "coalition of the willing" showing signs of going wobbly, and the recent announcement that Britain was withdrawing a good portion of its forces from Iraq, the political momentum in Britain (and the United States), which was going against the Iraq war, is suddenly reversed. Politicians are doing their best Churchill imitations, and the questions arising in the U.S. Congress and the media are swamped by an emotional tidal wave of pro-war sentiment. The scandals that plague the War Party both in Britain and the U.S. are eclipsed, and suddenly, with the prospect of suicide bombers in the streets of London – and perhaps New York – Martin Peretz's battle-cry uttered in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 is taken up once again: "We are all Israelis now." (Although, for good tactical reasons, Ariel Sharon is telling his diplomats not to say this too loudly.)

 

Who benefits? Who loses? And who knew? Surely Netanyahu knew, either "days" or "minutes" before the blasts shattered all hope that the War Party might yet be defeated – and it wasn't Scotland Yard that clued him in. In any case, the key question that must be asked, and answered, before the lesson of London's Terror Thursday can be fully assimilated and learned, is this: What did Bibi know, and when did he know it?

 

 

Justin Raimondo

[Aux]

Very interesting.

[Castro]

I am not paranoid. They told me so.

 

Very interesting analysis indeed. I suspect there's a lot of extrapolation in it but where there's smoke, there's often fire. The most convincing part of this theory is that support for the war was in fact declining rapidly in the US. We will now see an emotional uptick in the polls in support of the war.

 

Who benefits the most? Obviously the Bush and Blair administrations. But the benefits trickle downstream. Israel, Egypt and other US allies benefit from the distraction. The former won't have to worry about Gaza for a while. The noose around Mubarak's neck will be loosened just a bit for him to round up more opposition.

 

I wouldn't be surprised at all if the British secret service, or the American or Israeli was behind these bombings. Yes it sounds far fetched but look at who benefits the most. You wouldn't have a very difficult time finding a dumb f%ck "terror" organization affiliated with al-Qaida to fax in a claim of responsibility. Nothing more prestigious than claiming you have blown up the infidels. Even if you didn't.

 

I don't know. It's all speculation on my part of course and those who committed this are the only ones who know the truth. It does pay though to keep an open mind and follow the money trail - in this case, the motive trail.

 

Ofleh

[Haddad]

Originally posted by xiinfaniin:

Imperial Hubris

An interesting book that provides analyses one wouldn't expect from an American, let alone a senior intelligence analyst.

Originally posted by ofleh:

The most convincing part of this theory is that support for the war was in fact declining rapidly in the US. We will now see an emotional uptick in the polls in support of the war.

This war was thought to be one based on perception; it wasn't and won't be. A lot of things in this war no longer matter or factor. Whether supporting the war increases or decreases doesn't factor. Polls will not decide the outcome of this war. Many things will be tried in this war, but it's doubtful the desired results will be met. The track records of the past +2 years speaks for itself.

[Castro]

Polls will not decide the outcome of this war.

There is a positive correlation between how long a war, such as the one in Iraq, goes on and the level of support it has among the invader's population. A significant decline in this support as we have recently witnessed in the US will accelerate the withdrawal of the invader. Incidents such as the bombing in London yesterday increase, albeit slightly, the support for such a war.

 

War propaganda doesn't necessarily work on its intended audience alone. We have seen evidence of its effectiveness even among Somalis and other muslims who believe the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are wholly justified. If that were a gauge of its success, then it has been very successful for even those it is not directed at are internalizing it.

 

War, declared or otherwise, is deception. It's brutal. It's profiteering. The are no humane bombs or missiles. A B52 pilot carpet-bombing a city from 40,000 feet is on no more higher moral ground than a suicide bomber climbing onto a bus. Both destroy innocent lives. They're morally equivalent. Yeah I said it. It is in the eye of the beholder that justification is given. For westerners, Islamic fundamentalism is a threat to their way of life, therefore suicide bombing is evil. Conversely, for muslims, western greed and heathenism is consuming the world, then dying to kill westerners is wholly justified.

 

Lives have different values as well. When a hundred non-westerners are killed by a cruise missile, it is not as significant as one or two westerners dying of a suicide bombers act. Why is that? Where is the chart that puts different values on a life based on land of origin? Are some people more deserving of death? How much does racism influence these beliefs? I certainly don't know but what I see seems to suggest a lot of prejudice goes into life and death nowadays. Some will argue that a bomb dropped from the sky was not intended to kill innocent people but may accidently do so while a suicide bomber specifically targets the innocent. I think that is just semantics. Dropping a 500lb bomb from 20,000 feet will guarantee you no accuracy. Those dropping it know for a fact it will take innocent lives. They call it collateral damage. Generally, it will take a million or so Africans killed in Rwanda to even rise to the level of genocide but a few thousand Kosovars or Bosnians is immediately ethnic cleansing. It's a rotten scale we use to value different lives.

 

That's enough verbal hemorrhage for the day.

 

Have a good weekend y'all.

[Faarax-Brawn]

My short book, The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection, shows that Israel wasn't behind the 9/11 attacks, as many in the Arab world allege, but that they did have some knowledge that a terrorist attack was about to take place on American soil and somehow neglected to tell us about it

Hello!!, The Senior Most security personel in the USA[Her excellency Condi Rice],knew about an imminent attack. Its old news.

 

Anywhoo;

Is this guy by any chance related to RAY ROMANO of ‘everybody Loves Raymond’? Seriously he is one funny fellow

 

He had to spoil the entire read [For Me] of course by reiterating the ‘same ol-same ol’ story line.

 

Alas, even if this is true, this piece won’t hold any water. Of course you know the reason.

[OG_Girl]

I'm so sorry brother xiinfaniin..I don't want to spoil your topic but,I'm just wondering!When will accusations end? Dont you all hate it when they say this is an islamic terrorist act?

 

Well,as bad as this situation is this is nothing compared to what happens in Iraq, Palestine etc EVERYDAY!!

 

Al-qaeda is a like a brand name. Anyone blows up anything, they say they are Al-Qaeda and claim responsibilty...hmm AlQaeda is everywhere!!Even if al qaeda claim it, that still could be anyone.Anyone can claim being al qaeda cause who is al qaeda? All Arabs and Muslim? Just a thought!

 

Salam

[nuune]

here is another interesting article

 

 

From 9/11 to 7/7: Crusade intensifies

 

 

 

By abid ullah jan

Published: July 08, 2005

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The staged terrorist attacks are the occasions when even the most honest and since of us lose sight of the reality and start taking things on the face value alone. One can guess this from the statements of George Galloway and others who called it “shock and awe†in London

 

Galloway considers that Londoners had “paid the price†of the increased likelihood of terrorist attacks for the UK government’s role in the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan. However sincere such comments may be, they directly support the accusations without evidence which Blair put forward within minutes of the attack.

 

This was not a “shock and awe" in London because it was not an attack by aggressors from outside after years of lying through their teeth to the whole world. It was just another inside job: another staged 9/11 to intensify the war on Islam. Follow the pattern to believe it.

 

 

 

Within hours the news on AFP site read: “Blair, analysts see Islamic link to London blasts.†Well, we deserve to take a look at those experts Blair relies on. Please note: Boaz Ganor, director general of Israel's International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism and Mordechai Kedar, a counter-terrorism analyst for Israel's public television.

 

Also note the language Blair used: “It is important however that those engaged in terrorism realize that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world.†Didn’t Bush use the same words? Interestingly, even Paul Martin of Canada unnecessarily referred to "our way of life" and "freedom." Everyone was talking his heart and mind today without waiting for any clue as to who committed these horrible acts.

 

Blair brought Islam and Muslims into the fry right away: “We know that these people act in the name of Islam, but we also know that the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims, here and abroad, are decent and law-abiding people who abhor this act of terrorism every bit as much as we do.†Does it ring the familiar bell of the clash of civilisations and blaming Muslims without a single shred of evidence available at hand?

 

Comparing what Blair uttered in the most irresponsible way to what Bush said on 9/11, one comes to the conclusion that Bush was far moderate in his allegation. Blair jumped from “our way of life†to “our values†and “their values†in a show of transparent, well rehearsed sophistry.

 

Bush directly referred to the beginning of a crusade after 9/11. See how Blair went far ahead without mentioning the word crusade: “We will show, by our spirit and dignity, and by our quiet but true strength that there is in the British people, that our values will long outlast theirs.â€

 

Blair and Bush’s values are known to the world since they lied, invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq to continue brutal occupation and wreak terror into the lives of humiliated Iraqis. What we need to find here is the clues to this bombing from the public record available before the event unfolded on July 8, 2005 because it is confirmed that like 9/11 there would be no investigation. Even if there is any investigation, it would simply confirm what Blair had to say today.

 

Those who remember, the Indian Express and others reported Associated Press story on June 24 that BBC announced it would time delay “sensitive†news. Immediately, keen observers concluded that England would soon be the next site of a staged “terror†attack.[1]

 

Every word that we heard from Blair and his company shows that the recent bombing was a false flag operation designed to keep the West pitted against Islam. Even if we assume that 9/11 and 7/7 are handy operations carried by Muslims, we have yet to hear from someone that these attacks have been carried out “on a way of life†or “values†of the West. All these are fig leaves, used by those who have killed millions to impose their “values†and “way of life†abroad.

 

It does not take one to be a Muslim to understand what is going on. It only needs a cool mind to understand that the attack only benefits empires desperate to maintain a foothold in the Middle East without further eroding public opinion. Some reports show that Israeli embassy in London was warned before the attack and Israel insists that it doesn’t mean it has also carried out the attack.[2] Associated Press, however, reported that Nathanyahu change his planes due to bomb warning.[3] National Post in Canada also confirmed that the Israelis received warnings before the attack.[4]

 

Trying to spin their way out of this mess, Israeli embassy strongly denied early warning and claimed that it received the call after the first explosion.[5] But the claim that the call came after the first explosion doesn't work either because for almost an hour after that first blast it was still being reported as a power surge related accident.

 

Just this week, it was reported that England had drafted plans to pull out their troops.[6] Is the bombing a victory for Al Qaeda in this context? Are we to believe then that the orchestrated response to these plans was to blow up a double decker bus in England? Now, can you guess what the most likely response to such an event would be: Pull the troops out faster or galvanize public support, thus keeping the troops in Iraq?

 

To take advantage of the staged bloody game, almost instantly a previously unheard of Islamic group [7](The Secret Organization of al-Qaeda in Europe?) took credit – even though the translation falls apart under scrutiny because the Qur’an is improperly cited.[8] This is just the beginning and the war lords are already giving references to “Islamofascists†in their Islamophobic magazines such as National Review.[9] Jerusalem Post came out with the headline: “Rules of Conflict for a World War†(July 07, 2005).

 

We must not forget that Madrid bombers were linked to Spanish Security Service,[10] and other reports from sources such as BBC cited suspects as police informants.[11] As the co-opted media analysts are trying to draw links between Madrid and London, let us not forget the part where the suspects were connected to the government.

The motive behind this crime is evident from the statement by Fox News' Brian Kilmeade, who said London terror attack near G8 summit "works to ... Western world's advantage, for people to experience something like this together" along with who really did it.[12]

 

So far no one has any clue. Note the absence of description of the suspected bomber on the bus in this BBC story, which shows that maybe the man with the bomb wasn't the "right kind": a Muslim with Middle Eastern features. (BBC Report: Passenger believes he saw bomber URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/4663853.stm ). Imagine if the surviving passenger had described the suspect to be a Muslim.

 

There is not even a shred of evidence available so far that could implicate Muslims. However, what is undoubtedly clear is that those who staged these terror attacks once again exhibited the sort of calculation and ruthlessness that has come to be associated with the ideology at the heart of the crusade in the name of a “war on terrorâ€: Islamofascism.

 

 

Abid Ullah Jan is the Author of The End of Democracy and A war on Islam.

 

 

Source

 

 

Another very interesting story in the INDPENDENT

[xiinfaniin]

The Logic of Suicide Terrorism

[Haddad]

Disastrous Iraq adventure is a sideshow to the long haul war on terror

[NGONGE]

According to a covert investigation by secret clandestine organisations, four thousand individuals of the Jewish persuasion (probably all Mosad agents) did not take the tube or any London buses on the day of the attack.

[Haddad]

Originally posted by NGONGE:

four thousand

Using the same exact figure indicates lack of innovation & creativity. This reminds me of what they say about someone doing the same thing, expecting the same result(s).