My first reaction was that it was bogus, but I haven’t gotten any information on it yet. It would be odd for Blair to do anything to help Republicans get elected in a midterm.
No.
This is probably justification for the timing after the fact, but the report I saw on CNN this morning indicated that the police had found all the ingredients to make the bombs, and the only thing left for the terrorists to do would have been to buy plane tickets and board.
It wasn’t clear whether they knew the stuff had been bought before the raid.
I think it’s real, if only because Bush is on vacation. If the U.S. wanted to show they were on top of terrorism, why would they time the news to break when the boss is out of town?
But he’s not out of town. He’s in “The Western White House.”
See discussion here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7665538&postcount=17
and here
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7665606&postcount=19
Prpbably a real bust, but the timing is just sooooo convenient.
No.
So you don’t think that the terrorists might notice when a no liquids, no car remotes, no hand luggage* rule was imposed? Furthermore don’t you think when they could no longer get Abdul 21 of his best friends on the phone it might occur to them that someone was on to them? :rolleyes:
The bad guys have to know that someone is on to them. The public will want to know why they can’t bring a bottle of Scotch on the plane.
Add them up, there is no reason not to release the info.
Your BS meter needs new batteries.
*The no hand luggage rule will drive the passengers nuts. Lots of people refuse to check luggage becasue they are convinced that the airline will lose it. Others (like myself) always bring a carry on with books, iPod etc for things to do during the flight. Telling passengers no hand luggage is asking for a revolt among the passengers unless a damn good reason is given.
Not bogus, but the Bush administration is happy to exaggerate the danger.
U-571 in the air. The Brits do all the work, the Yanks take the credit for it.
But bogus, no.
I’m don’t think many will agree with me, but I’m not all that sure that Blair would want to help Bush in elections. Remember how close he was with Clinton? I suspect he just wants to suck up to whoever is in power in the US, not necessarily Bush.
Or, to put it as someone said above, there is no way Blair would agree to all this disruption and loss of time/money to people in the UK, just to influence a US election.
Call me naïve (and I’ll send a knuckle sandwich to the first member who replies, “OK, you’re naïve!” 
) but why do so many of the people automatically assume some kind of conspiracy theory and collusion about this announcement? Can’t an announcement of arrests regarding a potential terror threat be made without the rhetoric that it’s to the advantage of mid-term elections or that it was done to make a lot of money? Just because you hate Dubya, does that make you so cynical that everything coming from DC or London is taken with a grain of salt?
Look, I don’t like Dubya. He’s at best a C minus student who has managed to surround himself with marginally smarter people to tutor him and let him cheat off of them. His public speaking skills are an embarrassment and he exceeded his level of incompetence as soon as he was higher in government than dog catcher.
However, I do believe that sometimes these arrests come when the time is right. Don’t move too soon or else you don’t have credible evidence for prosecution. Don’t move too late or else you’ll have several thousand more grieving families. No matter what the government does, it is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Followed in either case by the people saying, “It was all done for political gain.”
Of course suspects are still being sought. These guys are like cockroaches. For every one you see, there are another 10 hiding. By making the announcement now they have caused the outstanding suspects to pause temporarily and go to ground. While they are regrouping and deciding what to do next since this plot was stopped, the investigators can continue trying to root them out. The suspects will communicate with either other cells or their contacts. Investigators will utilize their taps and informants to find them. And then there will be another series of arrests which people will find politically convenient.
Just maybe the investigative work that lead to the arrests and removal of this threat happened at this time because this is when it all fell together. Maybe they made the busts before it got too far.
Freud said it. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
erie74, my paranoia and impatience with Dubya et. al. aside, the details that we’re being given regarding this thing just don’t sound right. If you have an enemy as elusive and fragmentary as what we’re dealing with, wouldn’t it make sense to nab a bunch of the bad guys, monitor some others to see how they react, whom they contact and where they go and then continue with the arrests as opportunity permits? Pulling gently in this way you’d have a better chance of getting the weed by its deeper roots, so to speak. Instead we are told the plot was busted, some arrests were made, and all went public and front page before the police had finished serving their warrants.
EVERY enforcement agency knows you don’t send a telegram to a suspect announcing his imminent arrest. Again it’s not WHO is announcing it all that’s got my hackles up, it’s the apparent disregard of common sense policework. Sure, maybe something happened, but it ain’t what they’re saying it is.
Who knows? Maybe there was a leak and the reporters were threatening to publish. If the government can’t get them to sit on the story maybe the feds decide that it is better to come clean with what they have than to let the press speculate with “unnamed sources” and “members of the administration wishing to remain anonymous”.
Let’s say that the cops make a drug bust and hold a press conference. Eventually they show off the piles of drugs, guns and money they confiscated. Of course they didn’t catch everyone, but they can lean on the ones they do capture to get them to squeal (please, let’s not get into an offshoot discussion about how they’ll make them talk). You can capture the obvious ones and extract info from them to catch the big fish.
In the meantime, although the public is initially shaken by the threat that was averted, they regain confidence in their law enforcement and feel more secure in their environment. This allows them to go on with their lives and keeps the economy from stagnating.
OK, so maybe there is a political element to the press conference. Maybe it is a little element of showboating. “Look at us! We’re not the total incompetents and thugs you made us out to be! We stopped some bad guys from doing bad things.” I’d rather that they let me know what is going on than keep me in the dark. My imagination keeps filling in blanks that I would rather fill with the truth. Tell me you caught some terrorists and what they were going to do. Raise the threat level and take away my carryon. I don’t care if I am inconvenienced. I care more that the terrorist are inconvenienced. Preferably if they are inconvenienced into an early grave.
Not anymore. He’s gone up to Wisconsin.
Like we nee to import some more shit to Wisconsin. Please take all items brought with you back home to dispose of.
We did prove to have the most corupted governmental officials for the year. Maybe he’s here to learn from the best. I thought the poll taken this spring hillarious. 0% of all polled said they did not trust elected officials. The man said that he has never seen that result before in his life.
I think that Bush would loved to have this distract from his mistakes, and will try to turn this into a bigger event than it is. It big but so are a lot of events right now, and nobaody died in this one.
The reason is we’ve been burned so many times before, and we’ve seen the threat level fluctuate as a function of the political solution before.
Saying that, I think that the authorities believe this is real, though how serious it really is remains to be seen. As for why not observe, they can get the identies of other conspirators from the ones they caught, and the downside of someone slipping through is so great that it makes sense for them to be careful. How are you going to tell hundred of inspectors to be extra careful without the information leaking out?
I’ve heard that BS-o-meters are no longer allowed in carry-on luggage on jetliners . Apparently, they can be easily used to detonate explosives.
For example, explosives made from fertilizers like… um…
bullshit.
Weren’t the attacks supposed to happen TODAY. So it makes more sense to go public with it NOW rather than later in case some of the would-be attackers made it to the airport there’s be some heightened awareness to stop the plan.
And in some cases you DO want it known when the noose is tightening. If the British authorities were watching some guys who they suspected as being involved but weren’t sure yet, letting everyone know you are going after the ones involved may make them tip their hands. If Sayid and Abdul go about their daily routines then chances are they are not up to anything but if suddenly Abdul calls in sick for work and Sayid goes to the bank and empties his account… it may mean something.
Authorities are now saying that a dry run had been planned for either today, tomorrow, or Saturday and the bombing itself sometime next week.
I spent enough years in journalism to know that “the authorities” only tell the media what they want known when they want it known. If Chertoff is telling the public there may still be terrorists on the loose, there’s a reason why he wants 'em to know. Folks were missing flights by the dozens in Atlanta this morning – that doesn’t happen unless the threat is real. We got all the way to a Red level today. I wouldn’t want to be flying out of UK today.