I have just had my attention drawn to this rather startling claim:
Preliminary reports from a source inside the Pentagon indicate that one of the operatives involved in this morning’s bombings in London was recently released from the prison at Guantanamo.
The link is to a US website called ‘Northeast Intelligence Network’. Are they really high-level security operatives or just a bunch of wannabes? And is this ‘Pentagon source’ actually some filing clerk with ‘Deep Throat’ pretensions? Even assuming that these people are the genuine article, how can they possibly know this after just a few hours? As far as I can tell, there is no mention anywhere in the UK press about the identity of the suspects at all.
On the other hand, the British security services are notorious for a culture of secrecy and, if the story is true, it is typical of them to bury it, at least for a while (and in some cases for years).
I lean towards the view that this is fabrication, the chaff from the grinding wheel of the rumour-mill. But can anybody else shed any light?
Short of Debka level so take it with an even great pinch of salt.
The guy running that site seems to be popular in the conspiracy theory community. He makes appearances on Coast to Coast which regularly features programs about alien genetic manipulation of humans and government cover ups on alien visitation.
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/guests/654.html
Turning a RWR phrase on it’s head: “Doubt, but verify.”
It’s too perfect to likely be true. Doesn’t mean it isn’t.
I often used to read the North East Intelligence Community site and it used to be pretty informative. Those chaps are certainly on tenterhooks however, and if you follow everything they say you’ll end up living under the kitchen table.
Nonetheless, if this is one of the guantanomo lot then this would be very interesting.
The BBC have lionised these people and given them uncritical support.
The Sun are now suggesting that the bus explosion was a suicide bomber and that there are suspected links with groups in the midlands.
If this is a Brit then it’s bad news but also a sort of wake call both to the ‘community leaders’ in the muslim and the poncy media that haven’t really taken the threat of terrorism seriously. I’m thinking here of the ‘power of nightmares’ crap.
I think this falls under the heading of “wouldn’t it be ironic if…”.
This is of the order of the nonsense about “Jews knew – it was Mossad”, “all the security cameras were switched off – it was our government”, and so forth that have started to pop up all over the net. Not only is it inherently implausible, but the person making the claim could not possibly have the evidence required to justify it, because no-one else could either.
If that’s true then the UK and US governments have failed to protect us and some heads should roll.
Instapundit is running the same link, and noting that the website in question has a less-than-stellar reputation.
Best to leave this in the “rumor” bin until there’s some more reputable source that confirms it.
Guy Herbert, funny you say that – one the very first BBC products out of the rumour mill (at about 11.00 am) was that MI5 had been told that very morning by Mossad that a terrorist attack was imminent. Of course the MI5 press department must have been working overtime to get that story to the BBC within such a short space of time ….
Who cares who did it? There is never a shortage of volunteers to attack a country which illegally invades and occupies another country on totally spurious grounds. Stop messing with them and they’ll stop messing with you. Otherwise pay the occasional tithe of civilian blood back home and cut out all this bulldog-breed rhetoric– it’s so corny.
The BBC says the Daily Mail says some guy on the bus says he saw a very agitated man who was constantly checking his bag get off the bus just before the bomb went off.
Oops got that wrong. Sky now says the guy who saw it got off the bus with the agitated man still on board.
“Stop messing with them and they’ll stop messing with you.”
Al qaeda have been attacking western targets for a decade or more. Eventually it was difficult to ignore their provocation.
There is never a shortage of volunteers to attack a country which illegally invades and occupies another country on totally spurious grounds.
Yup. There were positively loads of people doing exactly that when Argentina invaded the Falklands.
Pull the other one.
One of my correspondents yesterday wondered if these attacks would stop people “dissing Gitmo”. I was sceptical.
Who cares who did it!!!!!!! Julie you have shit for brains!! Have you ever met a terrorist?Ihave(albeit a fairly old and toothless Irish one, well several actually).These people are creepy.They live in their heads, they believe themselves to be right and everybody else is wrong.They spout long forgotten history,( to everyone else but themselves) as a justification for the appalling acts of inhumanity they seek to perpetrate.They are fantasists , but they are very dangerous .I’m sorry to be blunt but there is no arguing with these people, they have to be hunted down and killed.
Julie – in simple words: the terrorists have been attacking the West for at least 20 years. Remember the Iranians taking the American embassy? Hmmm??? Jimmy “call me too stupid to breathe” Carter? Remember the Achille Lauro? Hmmm? 1985. The embassies, the banks, the kidnappings throughout those 20 years.
If you can do simple subtraction, you will be able to calculate that all of these events, including the WTC, took place before President Bush made the decision to declare war on terrorism. The Achille Lauro and the US Embassy in Teheran, for example, were not perpetrated in 1985 because we went into Iraq in 2004. This means they were “messing with us” for 20 years before President Bush decided to declare war on them. Please try to grasp this simple arithmetic and that buzzing noise in your head may go away.
Verity: Americam and Britain abnd France before it, have been interfering with the Middle East for upwards of 80 years. I’m surprised the payback didn’t start sooner.
If America had stuck to the Founders’ foreign policy principles it would not be bogged down in an unwinnable war today.
Julie-
You’re a goddamned dolt. Those stupid arabs would be nowhere without western development. Let’s not forget who found and developed all their oil for them. Who built their roads? Who invented and developed their water development for them? They hadn’t been a player on the world stage since the Middle Ages and they wouldn’t be now if it weren’t for us.
And what the hell do you mean about the ‘founder’s foreign policy principles’? What do you know about Barbary Pirates? The Monroe Doctrine? Go get an education before opening your ignorant cakehole to spout idiocies.
The way to stop an enemy from dogging you is not to buy them off and skulk back to your corner. It’s to pursue them and beat them and pursue them and beat them until they beg for mercy they don’t deserve. Every time you allow them to deal you lose.
Agreed, prairie biker. I think Mr Bush understands this. Blair does not. Blair is an appeaser – despite the fact that appeasing those immensely weaker than you simply does not make sense.
Julie:
We fought our first war against Islamia in 1801 — less than 20 years after Lord Cornwalis handed over his sword to General Washington.
Yeah, I agree with prairie biker, learn some history.
The Tripolitan Wars
“You’re a goddamned dolt. Those stupid arabs would be nowhere without western development. Let’s not forget who found and developed all their oil for them. Who built their roads? Who invented and developed their water development for them? They hadn’t been a player on the world stage since the Middle Ages and they wouldn’t be now if it weren’t for us”
I beg to differ. We are only getting what we deserve. That’s not to say that I am not saddened by the recent atrocities. The real truth is that western civilization has been KILLING muslims since the 12th century. If we would not have sided with Israel and remained truly neutral, we would not have a terror problem.
Western civilization has killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims. Did not the U.S. in effect put the Sha of Iran in power? Did he not proceed to brutalize his own people. Did not the U.S. also help Saddam to power? Did not the U.S. Arm Israel with every modern weapon? Has not Israel used these womens against the palestinians?
Western civilization has murdered hundreds of thousand of Arabs and then when they turn around and start murdering us we say, “why do they hate us so much….look at all we’ve done for them”!
I’m not going to validate any argument from a penile extension service. Sorry about that little fella.
Andrew Dodge:
One of my correspondents yesterday wondered if these attacks would stop people “dissing Gitmo”. I was sceptical.
They won’t stop me, Andrew, don’t worry. Terrorists are not about to change my way of life. (Though my attitude is more contempt than disrespect.)
“The real truth is that western civilization has been KILLING muslims since the 12th century.”
And Muslims have been KILLING members of Western civilization since the eighth. Funny how people who bleed on about “crusaders” are so quiet about the conquest of the Iberian peninsula, etc etc.
Bruce writes:
“Funny how people who bleed on about “crusaders” are so quiet about the conquest of the Iberian peninsula, etc etc.”
Well said! Nor are they inclined to remember the way in which Islam was spread by fire and the sword in the first place!
Some ‘religion of peace’!
This story may be false, but (Link) it is not unprecedented.
GCooper:
Remember: Islam “spreads”, the West “invades”.
The Sanity Inspector writes:
“Remember: Islam “spreads”, the West “invades”.
Excellent! Well said!
If you want to know the nature of your enemy then read the article by Amir Taheri in the London times.
“Western civilization has killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims.”
Where is your source for this claim?
The first ever conflict between what we would now call “the West” and Islam occured not in the 12th but in the 7th and 8th centuries when Islamic armies poured out of Arabia and invaded without any provacation the Christian Byzantine Empire. An entire Christian civilisation that had held sway from Turkey to Egypt was almost totally wiped out.
Islam followed this atrocity with an invasion of the West. This invasion succesfully took Spain but was halted in southern France.
From that time on Islamic armies made repeated attempts to invade the West , especially after the succesful invasion of the Christian Balkans by Islamic Turks.
So if we are going to play the game of who started what, the fact is that it was Islam that first attacked Christian civilisation, and it was Islam that first invaded and attempted to destroy the West.
The Crusades in the 12th century were in fact a defensive action by the West against Islamic warmongering.
I am in the unusual position of agreeing with Shawn… almost. The initial outline is OK, though overestimates the coherence of Byzantium, I submit. Islam was murderously aggressive from the begining. (It also swept away more than one civilization of the East that Shawn doesn’t worry about, and so contributed indirectly to the dominance of the Judeo-Christian tradition.) Islamic empires (never since the early days a single Ummah) frequently were so. However, the last line is rot:
“The Crusades in the 12th century were in fact a defensive action by the West against Islamic warmongering.”
Unless that “12th century” is deliberately selective, and you are talking about defending the gains in Outremer that resulted from the aggressive invasion of the 11th century. I suppose we are also discounting the adventurous nature of many of the 13th and 14th century expeditions to the East, let alone the Albigensian Crusade, and the ministry to the Slavs on the Baltic.
“Crusade” was a category, a moral claim, available to be applied to justify general (and generally aggressive) warfare where alternative foundations were not acknowledged. It was applied to an extraordinary variety of conflicts with a vast range of motivations, in a way that’s really not much different from the spectrum of uses of “jihad”. To believe that everything called a Crusade was part of a single coherent, justifiable struggle between two singular coherent world-historical forces, is mirror-image Islamism. It endorses the ibn Qtub worldview and inverts its heroes and villans. It is–to use a term deriving from mediaeval Christian traducement of one of those religious traditions swept away by Islam–Manichaean.
Islam was murderously aggressive from the begining.
Can’t agree with that. Certainly at the very beginning it was not. It was taken over by murderous thugs several hundred years later.
Compared to, for example, Europe in the same period, early Islamic culture was a paragon when it came to arts, science, literature and individual rights.
Some of the less crazy ones did some nice paintings before Allah cracked down on representations. They always segregated women, though. And had several “wives”.
As far as science goes, the Iranians seem to have been quite bright, but the Arabs were not scientifically driven at all. After all, Allah had ordered the universe and it wasn’t up to mankind to try to figure it out. What Allah wanted people to know, he would reveal.
The science and mathematics all came out of India and passed through the ME on their way to Europe. The belief system of Hinduism – it is not a religion – is particularly conducive to physics.
What is true is that some of the people held at G. bay have been there more than once.
They get captured, get let go – and some get captured again.
Oddly enough the media do not report this.
It would conflct with the standard “innocent people in chains, America is evil” line of both the British and American media.
Of course, there is a way round the problem of either keeping people at G. bay or letting them go to kill again. This would be to move to simply killing the enemy rather than trying to capture them. However, I suspect the media would not like this policy either.
“But he had his hands up and you shot him in cold blood” and so on, and so on.
This was sometimes the practice of American troops in World War II (for example when faced by some S.S. units), but the media was not hostile in those days.
Hopefully Al Qaeda will attack Beijing and then we shall see if the Human Rights Lawyers and do-gooders will criticise the ChiComs to the same extent as they have criticised the US.
Bet you they won’t!
Julie made a point about America’s Founding Fathers – it was of course Jefferson who sent American forces to North Africa.
Raids by Islamic forces on Europe started in the 7th century A.D. (after the conquest of the Christian Middle East and North Africa) and continued right up to the 19th century. Indeed if one includes Turkish actions – this struggle continued into the 20th century.
People who write about slavery should remember that the slave experience of Europeans – taken from ships or by raids on coastal areas. Just as people who write about the Crusades should remember that the Crusaders (for all their faults) were simply part of centuries of war.
Certainly things have been better at some times than at others (although there has never been total peace), and none of this means that the war in Iraq was a good idea – but the history is worth remembering.
The idea of President Bush and others seems to be that extremists have misinterpreted Islam and that (with some armed help) it is possible for the majority of good Muslims (it is assumed that the majority of Muslims are good – for example that the election which just returned a terrorist to office in Iran was rigged) to build nations that would not be hostile to the West.
These ideas may be totally mistaken, but the intention is certainly a good one.
GH: Islam was murderously aggressive from the begining.
Daveon: Can’t agree with that. Certainly at the very beginning it was not. It was taken over by murderous thugs several hundred years later.
Mm. Let’s see. Death of the Prophet (PBUH), 632 CE … Battle of Tours, Franks turn back Islamic invaders, 732 CE.
That’s a hundred years dead. Plenty of dead in fact: uncooperative Arab tribes, Persians, Syrians, Byzantines, Egyptians, Goths, Vandals and Visigoths, and a scattering of all the dozens of peoples they ruled over. Pretty murderously aggressive by contemporary standards, if not quite up to Gengis Khan’s level.
Am I missing something ? There appears to be an innate assumption here that the bombs on 7th July were the work of Islamic fundamentalists, AQ connects even.
Why ?
1. Co-ordinated attacks
2. Use of HE
3. No warning
4. er…..
Correct me if I am wrong, but these are characteristics which are not monopolised by the brethren of Mohammed, even unto those of OBL.
Several plausible authors spring to mind, perhaps of Celtic origin, Balkan, Kurdish, .. not to mention the sinister conspiracies attached to Zionism, Chechnya, drug traffickers … terrorists might be clever but intelligence sometimes doesn’t rate highly.
It may turn out to be a bunch of Wahibis in a drunken frenzy but I would wait before forming a judgement.
After all it appears to have taken our world class secret services two and a half days to identify they were dealing with explosions that synchronised within seconds.
Evidence that any testing / monitoring of gases/ bio / nuclear fallout ?
So far the official response appears a shambles.
“Damnable dolt”, “shit for brains”: Sad there are people that can’t disagree without being disagreeable, or object without being objectionable. Further, that they have the writing and computer skills, free time and inclination to express such views in the obnoxious manner demonstrated. Seems as if you get off on personal insults to women. And I thought I was a misogynist. You can see why there are so few women bloggers. When someone next suggests you “get a life”, don’t see it entirely as a rebuke. It could be the best advice you’ll get all week.