Bombs On Planes

Don't know how much I can add to the blogospheric coverage of the latest al Qaeda-brand plot, but here are the bare bones.

The Brits have successfully disrupted an Islamist terrorist plot to blow up as many as ten America-bound airliners flying out of London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports. The operation intended to use liquid-based explosives smuggled aboard the planes by suicide operatives in innocuous items like sport drink bottles. According to reports, the attacks were to be staggered, averaging one jet every twenty or so minutes over a space of three hours. A tactic that may sound implausible until you realize that all these planes would be over the Atlantic and therefore wouldn't exactly be able to make emergency landings.

Homeland security personnel on both sides of "the pond" responded by banning all carry-on luggage as well as some electronic devices and every kind of bottled liquid except prescription medication and (brace yourselves) baby formula. Does it even need to be pointed out that that is the next gambit the terrorists will attempt to use?

This jihadi plot was very similar to one from twelve years ago called Operation Bojinka, the principle difference being that the flights would have been trans-Pacific originating from East Asian locations, and the liquid explosives (acetone peroxide) would have been concealed in bottles of contact lens solution. That one unraveled for the same apparent reasons that this one did: the plotters' incompetence and a failure of operational security when one of their operatives chickened out and turned stoolie.

However the other line of similarity is that the al Qaeda "brand" remains fixated upon attacking passenger aircraft, and it appears both not that difficult to do and, but for fortuitous conspirator babyface turns, still infernally difficult for government security personnel to prevent.

The saving grace in this instance is that, given how much our forward anti-terrorist operations have degraded al Qaeda's operational capabilities, even their copycats have lost the capability to carry out mass attacks to fruition with the effectiveness that they used to possess. But then again, it bears remembering that all they have to do is succeed once to score a major victory, whereas success for us means perfection, and nothing less.

There was, of course, one demographic segment - aside from our enemies - that was crushingly disappointed in al Qaeda's latest failure (via TKS):

"How convenient to release this news the day after Lamont wins the primary. The politicization of "terror" reporting is so obvious."

"We need to wait and see - this could be another case of DOJ-style entrap & hype."

"Blair needs cover right now even more than Bush... British government leaks claim Bush told Blair in advance about invasion of Lebanon. The people arrested were planning this for sometime in the future. Bumping the terror rating over here all the way to red over that seems sketchy. Britain does have a far more effective anti terror mechanism than we or Israel, and a more reliable media. But don't let the accents fool you, MI5 is every bit as malevolent as the CIA or Mossad, prehaps more so."

"This is the price for close ties to Bush... Has anyone noticed that the planes targeted were all UK - US flights? Pretty clear symbolism there, I think."

"Wait for the backlash in the UK press - this will be laid at the feet of Blair for his unconditional support of US foreign policy."

"There may actually be a terrorist plot here. But given the false alarms and the tendency for the UK police to act stupid and run around bumping into things, I think some hard facts would be useful before we assume that there really is a viable plot to start blowing planes out of the sky."

"The US is now on 'red alert,' but only for incoming planes from the UK, as far as I can tell. I'm not saying nothing has happened to cause genuine concern, but this UK/US response strikes me as bullshit... The report I saw stated that most or all of the 21 arrested were Pakistani; most or all were UK-born Pakistanis. Bushco is openly selling arms to Pakistan, but incoming flights from Islamabad apparently aren't worth a scratch of the head at this red-alert moment. Evil is incoming today on air flights from London and only London, dammit. Be afraid! Be very afraid of England and the evil it spawns!

Or would it make more sense to just lock down the loos on flights from the UK?
Sorry, this story just isn't passing the smell test for me."

"So the war in Iraq and all that profiteering there, all the death, results in making our airspace safer HOW??? Tell us again, Holy Joe Lieberman, how your GOP buddies' tough talk and money-grabbing war profiteering made us safer???""how convenient to release this news the day after Lamont wins the primary. The politicization of 'terror' reporting is so obvious."

Lessee: Anglo-American authorities deliberately waited until this terror plot was imminent to break it specifically to steal Ned Lamont's thunder; it's nothing but Justice Department misinformation designed to cover up the revelation that Bush REALLY ordered the invasion of Lebanon as a distraction from the "disaster" in Iraq; the CIA, which is the repository of as much vicious left-wing "anti-war" sentiment as any rathole this side of...well, the Daily Kos, is as "malevolent" as the Mossad, which dropped the ball on intel vis-a-vie Hezbollah (I guess in Kosspeak, "malevolence" means "incompetence"); the plot originated in Britain because they are our ally and should disavow us immediately, like Spain did, which didn't spare them additional attempted attacks; it's not a "real" terrorist plot unless it actually succeeds, in which case it's all Bush's fault for failing to prevent it with the counter-terrorism tools libs want to deny him because they think he's a "dictator"; Bush is actually behind the plot himself because we sell arms to Pakistan, and on that basis we should stop all inbound flights from Islamabad even though those were not the flights the plotters were targeting; some bad potty humor; and another non sequitous round of "Let's make ourselves safer by retreating from the terrorists in Iraq."

And these people want power over our country.

Michael Savage takes a lot of heat for comments like calling liberalism "a mental disorder." When it comes to the fever swamps of neoBolshevism, however, it's difficult to describe it any other way. Or not to conclude that the Democrat base is as dangerous to the country from within as the Islamic Fundamentalists that are trying to destroy it from without.