A Profile Of Multiple Connections
Thomas Joscelyn reports in the Weekly Standard of important similarities between last week's thwarted al Qaeda plot to down as many as ten UK-US passenger flights and last year's successful 7/7 subway bombings in London. The similarities suggestion a Pakistani connection, an irony if true since it was Pakistani intelligence that proved crucial in averting the attack at just about the last hour. A possible case of the left hand arm-wrestling the right, and perhaps the Musharraf regime still playing both ends against the middle to keep itself atop its precarious perch.
On the other hand, NewsMax senior correspondent and Middle East expert Kenneth R. Timmerman suggests that Hezbollah might also have been involved:
Regardless, this brings back to the fore the same tiresome political footballs of ethnic profiling and the NSA and SWIFT anti-terror tools the New York Times treasonously exposed. In fact, according to this Time account:
The plot reportedly began sometime last year, before the Terrorist Surveillance Program was compromised. Without the TSP, it may well have succeeded, and literally thousands of civilians needlessly perished.
It's tempting to say that that, or worse, is what it's going to take to shut up the DisLoyalists and reestablish our focus on defeating the Islamic Fundamentalists, both Sunni and Shiite, that are trying to "Caliphatize" us. But wasn't 9/11 supposed to have done that? To have "changed everything"? Apparently it didn't. I tend to think that another successful mass casualty attack at home would have correspondingly less impact and the reimposed vigilance and political perspective less endurance. I also think that the domestic Left wouldn't close ranks at all but would add this calamity to their laundry list of impeachment articles and divide our country even further.
That could - and probably would - further bury the Dems as a serious national alternative to the frankly tiring GOP regime on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. But it would also make us look all the more ripe for the taking by the mullahs in Tehran and the Kim regime in North Korea, just to name the two leading global "rogues." And who could blame them? Examples of U.S. weakness, fecklessness, and cowardice are far more recent and numerous than their antitheses that fall under the general category of, "Don't tug on Superman's cape."
Three years ago our enemies, as Libya's Colonel Khadaffy amply demonstrated, knew better than to cross us. That, and not the goodwill of the criminal enablers of Turtle Bay, is the kind of "international respect" we need. But after a year and a half of the "second Bush term as first Kerry term" multilateral pap of the Condi Rice State Department, that healthy, robust fear has dissipated, and getting it back is going to be a lot harder - and a lot more costly.
It's as I've always said: our standard of success in preventing terrorist attacks is, by definition, perfection. Their standard of success in carrying them out is simply, "one more." Last week they almost got one more through. Eventually they'll negate the "almost." What happens after that will be another highly instructive lesson in whether victory in this inter-civilizational conflict is a rational expectation.
On the other hand, NewsMax senior correspondent and Middle East expert Kenneth R. Timmerman suggests that Hezbollah might also have been involved:
Timmerman, appearing as a guest on MSNBC’s Tucker with Tucker Carlson, said the plot was reminiscent of one in 1986 that was foiled by French authorities.The motivations for both connections aren't hard to fathom. Sunni/Wahaabist al Qaeda, having been decimated by U.S. countermeasures since 9/11 and now being eclipsed by Shiite Iran/Hezbollah as top of the global terrorist ratpack, would certainly want to show, in their trademark spectacular fashion, that they're still relevant and a force to be reckoned with. The latter, for their part, would, by the strategy of deliberate anti-US provocations set forth in War Plan R, have a ready-made context for such massive attacks in the ongoing Battle of Lebanon and America's role in providing diplomatic cover (until last week, anyway) for Israel's defensive onslaught against the Hezbos. It could even have been part of Adolph Ahmadinejad's promised "big surprise" of August 22nd.
"Hezbollah operatives had tried to bring in liquid explosives to launch terrorist attacks,” Timmerman said. "The French caught them and the explosives, which were brought in inside little liquor bottles. This is the kind of thing that has Hezbollah’s fingerprints all over it.”
Regardless, this brings back to the fore the same tiresome political footballs of ethnic profiling and the NSA and SWIFT anti-terror tools the New York Times treasonously exposed. In fact, according to this Time account:
[A] knowledgeable American official says U.S. intelligence provided London authorities with intercepts of the group's communications.
The plot reportedly began sometime last year, before the Terrorist Surveillance Program was compromised. Without the TSP, it may well have succeeded, and literally thousands of civilians needlessly perished.
It's tempting to say that that, or worse, is what it's going to take to shut up the DisLoyalists and reestablish our focus on defeating the Islamic Fundamentalists, both Sunni and Shiite, that are trying to "Caliphatize" us. But wasn't 9/11 supposed to have done that? To have "changed everything"? Apparently it didn't. I tend to think that another successful mass casualty attack at home would have correspondingly less impact and the reimposed vigilance and political perspective less endurance. I also think that the domestic Left wouldn't close ranks at all but would add this calamity to their laundry list of impeachment articles and divide our country even further.
That could - and probably would - further bury the Dems as a serious national alternative to the frankly tiring GOP regime on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. But it would also make us look all the more ripe for the taking by the mullahs in Tehran and the Kim regime in North Korea, just to name the two leading global "rogues." And who could blame them? Examples of U.S. weakness, fecklessness, and cowardice are far more recent and numerous than their antitheses that fall under the general category of, "Don't tug on Superman's cape."
Three years ago our enemies, as Libya's Colonel Khadaffy amply demonstrated, knew better than to cross us. That, and not the goodwill of the criminal enablers of Turtle Bay, is the kind of "international respect" we need. But after a year and a half of the "second Bush term as first Kerry term" multilateral pap of the Condi Rice State Department, that healthy, robust fear has dissipated, and getting it back is going to be a lot harder - and a lot more costly.
It's as I've always said: our standard of success in preventing terrorist attacks is, by definition, perfection. Their standard of success in carrying them out is simply, "one more." Last week they almost got one more through. Eventually they'll negate the "almost." What happens after that will be another highly instructive lesson in whether victory in this inter-civilizational conflict is a rational expectation.
posted by JASmius at 9:14 PM
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