I might believe a connection between the US political primaries and this terror attack, but not in the way suggested above- it would follow to me that terrorists might plan their attack to coincide with important political events. But I think it’s a little paranoid to think that the UK government timed their arrests to coincide with the US primaries. Probably just boils down to the fact that I trust Tony Blair a heck of a lot more than I trust George Bush.
Well, I’m probably just blowing smoke regarding the coincidence of the alert with the referendum in CT but if I were cynical about this I guess I might think something along the following lines:
According to Tony Blair, they had tracked the situation for a “long period of time” and had “been involved in an extraordinary amount of hard work.”
But they chose to move in today and the U.S. chose to go on alert.
They think they pretty much got
BUT even if I were not cynical, I would get real skeptical if I started seeing a series of these warnings between now and election day.
Or maybe the timing of the plot had nothing to do with elections in the US, and the Brits acted to thwart the plot based on something other than coinciding with the elections in the US. Nah, that wouldn’t make any sense.
If you found it odd it’s because they didn’t “stop” after President Bush’s re-election it’s because they didn’t. There have been 5 official changes in status (not including the current change). The last major rise in status occurred during the London bombing. The changes are not universal and can be directed at specific events, locations or industries. Currently it is as follows:
[ul]Code Red or Severe for flights originating in the United Kingdom bound for the United States[/ul]
[ul]Code Orange or High for all commercial aviation operating in or destined for the United States. [/ul]
[ul]The rest of the country remains at Code Yellow. [/ul]
What should be noted is a decline in public announcements and that is probably due to the fact that it was ridiculed in the press. If you are in the freight business it’s not hard to figure out when things have been elevated (internally) with Customs. It’s not unusual to have border clearance grind to a halt at specific ports or the entire border on a given day. Clearing Customs can vary from 30 minutes to 5 hours.
JM2C
Aw, jeeze! Politicians are making speeches all the time, and in the past few years a lot of them are about things that could affect civil rights. If cops couldn’t arrest folks because some politician spoke out about a pertinent issue sometime in the recent past for fear that someone would make a connection, real or imagined…
Pjen:
Yes, there is ageneral lack of trust among the British populace inre politicians generally, and Blair specifically. But, to claim that this is some sort of sinister plot to tie in with the recent US election and the ouster of Reb Yoseph seems, to me anyway, to be sort of silly.
Whereas on this side of the pond, there doesn’t seem to ever be an inauspicious time to scare the general pop outta their collective knickers over some bullshit “terrorist” situation. And quite frankly, if this had come from the bowels of the Bush admin, I wouldn’t believe a single word uttered. But as someone already noted, I trust Blair more than Bush. Maybe that’s a bad move on my part, but it’s where I stand.
-Waste
It’s no fun if you can’t play 5 Degrees of “W”.
I hate it when the fundie lefties put me in a position to defend Bush.
Two bits says it turns out to be a bunch of amatuer AlQ imitators/wannabes.
elucidator, if we can define “a bunch of amatuer AlQ imitators/wannabes” adequately, I’ll take that action.
Had Mohammed Atta et al been caught 9/10/01, would they have been considered an amateurs? What if only one attack had been successful? Would the failed attempts have been considered amateurs?
Said it before, that 9/11 attacks were amatuerish to the point of folly. They worked because we were so stupid. Case in point: the cockpit doors were unlocked. We have had airplanes hijacks for…what?..40 years now? And the doors to the cockpit weren’t locked? Huh? WTF?
But as Ms. Rice so famously remarked, “Who could imagine…?”
Then we really need to define amateur versus professional if I’m going to take that bet.
I don’t believe this is a case of some penny-ante plot (like the Sears Tower guys) being revealed for political reasons; the timing’s all wrong. The GOP was trying to get a major paint-Lamont-as-an-extremist thing going, even bringing out Cheney to help, and this has completely interrupted that effort.
Posted in another thread
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.”
With that logic every terrorist would be an amateur. How does one rate wanna-be status if (as a terrorist) they intend to kill themselves along with hundreds of people?
4 cents says they were the real-deal capable of carrying out a massacre. Kudo’s to the Brit’s for stopping the event.
erie774, “OK, you’re naïve!”
Loves me some knuckle sammich!
Bang! Zoom! Right in the kisser! 
Well, for instance, a dumbshit who loads explosives in his shoe without securing the means to detonate. You want to argue over the term “amatuer”, I toss it aside and use “inept”. Same difference to me, and you get to rack up some points. I guess.
elucidator, short of Carlos the Jackal, whom would you consider a professional terrorist? IMHO, and with no evidence to back this up, I would say that any suicide terrorist is naïve at best and likely stupendously dumb. The real brains behind these outfits aren’t going to send capable, intelligent people to kill themselves; they’re too rare.
As to whether these were AlQ soldiers, independents funded by AlQ, or independents looking to impress AlQ, I don’t know. Throw a dart at the board; chances are probably equal.
Members of the IRA, grandsons of other members? Members of the Basque seperatist movement, ETA? People like that.
I am not remotely interested in parsing the semantics of “amatuer” as it applies to “terrorist”. As I said, use some variant of “inept”, as you choose.
The ones who don’t commit suicide when they attack. Actually, I was thinking along the same lines when I was opining on the skill and brainpower of the suicide terrorist.