Majorityrights Central > Category: War on Terror

My thanks to Bo Sears for the link to this Washington Times piece, Al Qaeda eyes bio attack from Mexico.

Last October, Bo picked up on Joe Biden’s warning of a nation-shaking event.  Now we get one from “U.S. counterterrorism officials” who have:

authenticated a video by an al Qaeda recruiter threatening to smuggle a biological weapon into the United States via tunnels under the Mexico border, the latest sign of the terrorist group’s determination to stage another mass-casualty attack on the U.S. homeland.

The video aired earlier this year as a recruitment tool makes clear that al Qaeda is looking to exploit weaknesses in U.S. border security and also is willing to ally itself with white militia groups or other anti-government entities interested in carrying out an attack inside the United States, according to counterterrorism officials interviewed by The Washington Times.

The officials, who spoke only on the condition they not be named because of the sensitive nature of their work, stressed that there is no credible information that al Qaeda has acquired the capabilities to carry out a mass biological attack although its members have clearly sought the expertise.

The video first aired by the Arabic news network Al Jazeera in February and later posted to several Web sites shows Kuwaiti dissident Abdullah al-Nafisi telling a room full of supporters in Bahrain that al Qaeda is casing the U.S. border with Mexico to assess how to send terrorists and weapons into the U.S.

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So the papers say you are that mysterious entity, an “anti-terrorist chief”.  It’s very gratifying, and sounds rather grand, too, doesn’t it?  Supercop meets M in the corridors of power, and all that.

But, actually, you are just a New Labour policeman.  That’s the sort of policeman who doesn’t have large feet, a drink habit and problems at home.  The sort who has a degree in sociology, who knows the rules of the political game, who networks.  Who, naturally enough, gets fast-tracked to the top.

Did I say “New Labour policeman”?  I meant stooge, of course.

But it’s not all working lunches with the Ministerial team and educational visits to Vancouver and Las Vegas.  Such plod-power and privilege as your undoubted ambition has brought you also brings the odd sticky wicket along.  None more sticky than when the Minister “tasked” you to dissuade your favourite Yorkshiremen - the ones who flop down in the direction of Mecca five times a day - from doing inconvenient things with rucksacks and gas canisters.  You know, blowing-up passengers in buses and trains ... planting car-bombs outside nightclubs ... driving them into airport terminals.  That sort of thing.

Of course, it’s no particular problem to set up a security solution.  Not these days with biometrics, electronic eavesdropping, MI5, C5 and the rest.  It’s just a matter of scaling up.

But, annoyingly, that’s not what the Minister wants.  No, it seems that your talents aren’t needed at all on the heavy stuff.  They are required for something altogether more familiar, more ... political.  And therein lay the sticky bit.  Somehow you have to:-

1. Make Muslims feel that the state is not targeting them when, in fact, it is.

2. Make them think it’s all about al-Qaeda instead.

3. At all costs don’t make the white punters jumpy about the MultiCult.

And how have you gone about this delicate little balancing act?  Well, you are not an “anti-terrorist chief” for nothing:-

Blond, white schoolboy is al-Qa’eda extremist, say police

A schoolboy aged 12 has been identified as an al-Qaeda inspired extremist after sending beheading videos to his classmates, police have disclosed.

Anti-terrorism chiefs have said the example revealed how violent extremism is spreading “like a virus infecting young minds”.

The blond, white schoolboy from West Yorkshire is among 120 people being dealt with by police in a new anti-terrorism scheme targeting al-Qa’eda inspired youths.

He has been identified only by the initials BC and was reported by his school after he was found circulating video clips of terrorists beheading Westerners.

Sir Norman Bettison, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, said: “That was bad enough, but he also has an unnatural interest in guns and weapons.

“He spoke openly of his wish to be a sniper and spoke of his curiosity of what it would be like to kill someone.”

Sir Norman described him as an “angelic looking boy” whose police mugshot showed a fair-haired child so short that his head was barely in the frame of the camera.

“He is at risk of being a violent young man and a threat to society,” the chief constable said.

“He is not a Muslim. He is not driven by ideology – he is too young to spell the word.

“But he is being influenced and intoxicated by the imagery and appeal of Jihadist and other internet violence.”

Sir Norman, speaking at a conference of police chiefs in Liverpool, said that the internet helped to peddle the “virus”.

He added: “We know that there is a latent sense of grievance in the minds of many young people which, in the right conditions, can lead to the desire for violent expression.

“What happens if they learn how to build and deploy an explosive device that will cause mass casualties? Or if core al-Qa’eda can get their hands on these people to act as mules for a more sophisticated attack?”

The police chief urged every parent – particularly Muslims – to address the issue of extremism with their children.

“The al-Qa’eda brand of violent extremism continues to spread like a virus infecting young minds,” he said.

“Every young Muslim will be introduced to ideas around al-Qa’eda and a ‘global struggle’. I don’t see how you can avoid it in 2008.”

The 12-year-old boy arrived in Britain as an asylum seeker in July 2005, and at the age of eight allegedly assisted a nine-year-old and a 12-year-old boy in the forced rape of his sister, although he was never prosecuted, police revealed.

He is now being handled under a scheme known as the Channel Project, which has been running for the past nine months.

The number of suspects uncovered so far – 124 - was “higher than expected”, Sir Norman added.

They have been referred to the police and other agencies by schools, community leaders, mosques and others.

“We are trying to intervene early. We are trying to snuff out violent extremism,” said Sir Norman.

Sir Norman said none of the referrals had been prosecuted because officers were attempting to avoid using anti-terror laws against anyone identified by the scheme.

“Throwing the book at them in terms of the Prevention of Terrorism Act would be complete overkill,” the chief constable said.

“We are not talking about criminal actions. We are talking about vulnerable kids.”

Two other cases highlighted by the senior policeman were Muslim youths, known only as NH and YH, who were both 15 when they were reported by their communities because they were showing extremist and racist tendencies.

So far, then, Britain has been treated to 7/7, 21/7, Bluewater, the Barot offensive, the West End poets and the inflammatory Glasgow doctors.  And let us not forget Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber.  But yesterday, our Prime Minister’s new head security guard informed us:-

We’re talking about such a big change in the way people behave that it’s inevitably going to take 10 to 15 years, and that’s if we’re lucky, and that’s what I hope we can achieve.

I think it would be wrong to pretend otherwise to the British nation.

He then went on to pretend that the Moslems currently domiciled in my homeland can be got to look beyond the palms of their hands and “snitch” on the AQ-intoxicated.  The real enemy, apparently, is a “disparate core” of “racist” people, often based abroad, who want power.  Elsewhere we learn that “these people are trying to destroy one’s entire way of life.”  And that life is, you know, “our” collective Moslem and non-Moslem MultiCult rainbow-dream thingy:-

Britishness does not normally involve snitching or talking about someone.  I’m afraid, in this situation, anyone who’s got any information should say something because the people we are talking about are trying to destroy our entire way of life.

“We’ll have to be a little bit unBritish, I think . . . and say something and tell something.

So let’s put the pieces together from a majority perspective.

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The picture emerging tonight of the attempted double bombing in London’s West End looks very like both the Barot and the Bluewater gang plans of attack.  The leader of the Bluewater gang, it should be noted, was never caught.

In any event, I find it strange and interesting that these, of course, deeply religious young men should wish to dismember and incinerate “slags” in a London nighclub - Tiger Tiger, the club in The Haymarket, was running a ladies night when the car-bomb was parked thoughtfully outside and the occupant sprinted away into the night.  According to one BBC report:-

Islamist extremist literature sometimes singles out clubs as examples of the immoral hypocrisy of countries like the UK.

We’ve seen Islamic terrorist attacks on nightclubs before, most notably and unforgettably in 2002 in Bali.  But then it was possible to see this as an economic attack on the Indonesian government as well as a punishment for John Howard’s support of Bush’s War on Terror.  Certainly as regards the former, Islamic terrorists had bombed the Jakarta Stock Exchange attack a full year before 9/11.

The next landmark attack was the double hit in Istanbul in November 2003.  This time there was no question that the targets were political and economic: the British consulate and the HSBC bank headquarters in Istanbul.

Obviously, there is no shortage of potential political or economic targets in London.  There are American targets.  There are Israeli and Jewish diaspore targets.  One would think that the destruction of one or other of these would resonate well enough with the Ummah ... always assuming that the Ummah was moved by revenge attacks for the indignity of Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine.  But here we have nothing of that sort but, apparently, a third large-scale attack on the decadence of the West.  Why?

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We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations.  Three of these involved our own country.  Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world.  Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America’s adventure in free government, such basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations.

... Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry.  American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well.  But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment.  We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.  The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government.  We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.  Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.  The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.  We should take nothing for granted.  Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

The stark warning of Dwight D Eisenhower, contained in his farewell address of January 17, 1961.

You do have to follow the money.  If you follow the money here, it’s not so much that Halliburton wanted a war so they told Dick Cheney to go get one for them.  It wasn’t that.  But you do get a willingness to go to war.

Lt.Col Karen Kwiatkowski, US Dept of Defense (ret) and noted critic of the war in Iraq, quoted in the BBC documentary Why We Fight, broadcast on 23rd March, 2005.

The United States is moving closer to war with Iran by accusing the “highest levels” of the Iranian government of supplying sophisticated roadside bombs that have killed 170 US troops and wounded 620.

The allegations against Iran are similar in tone and credibility to those made four years ago by the US government about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the invasion of 2003.

The Indy’s front page lead today.

Below the fold is that BBC documentary in four parts, as it is packaged for YouTube.  Certainly it is beautifully produced, and duly received its professional encomia from Robert Redford’s friends.  But the BBC is a wholly left-leaning organisation and it shows.  By way of a health warning, be aware that the programme opens with a carefully cut and edited version of Ike’s farewell speech (in the opening quote to this post I have re-contextualised his words).  Of the integrity of the rest of the programme I won’t comment in any detail, save to say that the conclusions broadly agree with my understanding of how this wicked world works.

Bear in mind also that the saving grace of the programme-makers is their discontent.  As they make clear in their criticism of Congress they are from a tradition that is not at all the same as the political left.  On this we may find common cause.

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A reposting is required, I’m afraid.  My facts were wrong last time and the NYT article was from exactly a year ago.  I’m done cussing at myself, so you’ll just have to imagine that part as vividly as possible.  The question remains, however, as to why this story is still so very elusive, ie avoided by the usual suspects.  Ian Bruce, the journalist, has posted it at the Glasgow Herald, as mentioned below, and at Mathaba.net - and that’s it, it seems.  Where is the mysterious Pentagon report?  Is it merely Bruce’s treatment of the report that is out of the ordinary and unrepeated elsewhere?

Anyway, here goes a second time ...

Bo Sears sent me a link to this article from the Glasgow Herald.  It’s a week old now - and was, therefore, published one day after the 3,000th American casualty in Iraq.  It draws on an apparently secret Pentagon study.

As its headline indicates, the article reveals that the bulk of the casualties are young, white soldiers from “rural, farming communities scattered from backwoods Louisiana to Ohio and the Great Plains states of Dakota and Wyoming.” Since the main killer is the perfectly indiscriminate roadside bomb it is fair to assume that the victims are a representative sample of American forces in Iraq, and fair also to extrapolate from that a picture of the kind of young man who believes in the myth of America enough to take up arms.  It is equally fair to conclude that other ethnicities are, in the round, correspondingly less patriotic.

Let it be said, they are less susceptible to their President’s betrayal, too - no bad thing.  But the ethnicity of American patriotism revealed so starkly by a newspaper published, of all places, in Scotland is obviously significant and obviously sensitive.

This weekend saw much commemoration of the Battle of the Somme.  It is ninety years since the artillery fell silent, that first whistle blew and, bayonets fixed, the men went over the top.

I can’t deny that military action holds a fascination for me.  I would be surprised if any man of my generation has not wondered whether he had it in him to do what his grandfather and, twenty-five years later, his father did.

Some of our sons are answering that question for us today.  This weekend also saw the latest deaths of British servicemen fighting the War on Terror - in a fire-fight at Sangin in Afghanistan.

Take some time to read this account of an otherwise unreported firefight that took place at the precise same moment.  Forty-eight soldiers of C Company of the 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment - with an attachment of airborne troops from the Royal Irish Rangers – fought off a very determined “bunch of Afghans in rubber sandals.”

Excitement aside, the account made me wonder whether the lightly-equipped, friendship-toting British Army has any utility in Helmand.  If it isn’t there to occupy the area in the conventional, lock-down sense, and if it can’t possibly win the goodwill of the people, what is its mission?  The Times’ correspondent, Christina Lamb, doesn’t venture much on the matter, but gives us this:-

I thought about John Reid, the former defence secretary, glibly saying he hoped to complete the three-year British mission to Helmand without a shot being fired.  If this wasn’t a fourth Anglo-Afghan war, it felt very much like it.

Why were we there?  Why had we thought the Afghans wouldn’t fight - they defeated the Russians after all.  And why did everyone in Kabul and London keep insisting that nobody in Helmand really wanted to support the Taliban but were being forced to?

What if they were wrong?  After all, almost everyone in the province now depends on growing poppies.  Whatever the British commanders might say, villagers must see the presence of British troops as threatening the opium trade.

Of course, the operation in Helmand is not at all concerned with poppy cultivation.  It studiously avoids all such inflamatory considerations.  It is a peacekeeping initiative under NATO control (NATO having taken over strategic coordination of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan in the summer of 2003).  NATO’s brief is to facilitate the Afghan government’s “ownership of and, eventually, full control and responsibility for” the country.  So, is order imposed from Kabul an objective which the villagers of Helmand would welcome, surviving as they are principally off the narcotics trade?  We would be living in a very strange logical universe if it was.

In a sense wider than just utility, then, I find myself brought back to Christina Lamb’s existential bastardisation, “Why were we there?”  On what basis does NATO, an agent of the elevated and far-distant “international community”, justify its intervention?  And does it lend any real moral legitimacy?

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The official inquiry into the 7 July London bombings will say the attack was planned on a shoestring budget from information on the internet, that there was no ‘fifth-bomber’ and no direct support from al-Qaeda, although two of the bombers had visited Pakistan.

The first forensic account of the atrocity that claimed the lives of 52 people, which will be published in the next few weeks, will say that attacks were the product of a ‘simple and inexpensive’ plot hatched by four British suicide bombers bent on martyrdom.

Far from being the work of an international terror network, as originally suspected, the attack was carried out by four men who had scoured terror sites on the internet. Their knapsack bombs cost only a few hundred pounds, according to the first completed draft of the government’s definitive report into the blasts.

Mark Towsnend, writing in The Observer today.

So these well-adjusted, Westernised young men, all born in Britain and led by a married thirty-year old special-needs teacher, were entirely self-motivated and self-trained.  There was no AQ hand at work.  There was no international flow of funds.  There was no connection to the wider world of Islamic terror at all other than via a few “How To” websites and a rant by Ayman al-Zawahiri, which someone tacked on to Mohammad Sidique Khan’s video broadcast by Al-Jazeera.

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