Also just as an aside, I kinda worry about whoever perpetrated those anthrax attacks in 2001. They were smart enough to obtain and utilize an at least semi-effective form of weaponized anthrax to kill people and to avoid capture in what I belive was the largest FBI investigation in history. Judging from the letters that were sent with the stuff, they were apparently more or less unhinged and they’ve now had five years to work on something worse, if they are so inclined.
None of which supports the assumption they were/are al-Qaeda, or Islamic extremists of any kind. They might just as easily have been of the ilk of Timothy McVeigh.
Not that that’s in any way a more comforting hypothesis.
OK, so let’s break this down and see if I’ve got it all straight.
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Plot to blow up tallest building on West Coast: May have been a real plot but hardly seems to have gotten very far and therefore it remains unclear how real the threat was.
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Breaking up the Southeast Asian terrorist cell: Either no support for the East Asian terrorist cell has been found by fellow dopers or Bush seems to have taken an aspect of the plot to blow up the Library Tower (AKA, tallest building on the west coast) and treated it as a separate conspiracy.
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Anthrax: If he’s referring to the great post 9/11 Anthrax scare, no Al Qaida connection was found. If that’s not what he’s referring to then the President is relying on evidence he has and we don’t and, well, you know how that’s worked out in the past.
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The British-discovered plot. OK, El Kabong, I now remember it. I have been conditioned by experience to regard anything Bush says as a potential lie and that blocked the old memory banks. This is by far and away the most solid example of prevented terrorist acts (though I do seem to have a dim recollection that there problems even with this one) and it’s the Brits who deserve the credit, not the White House.
All in all a pretty weak series of claims by the President, no? Since he seems to be trying to scare us with what appears to be a doubtful list of achievements (for the implied threat, I would argue, is what would happen if Bush and Co. wasn’t around to protect us) I think these claims are sort of scandalous, no?
Hold on to your hats, but it turns out that our president was talking out his ass yet again. I am beginning to think that he may not be the man we all thought him to be.
You mean President Bush would lie? But, but isn’t he…a Christian?
Lied about that, too.
Much as I dislike the chimp, and don’t believe a word he says, in this sort of situation mis-information is necessary.
Given that our UK authorities have had five failed bombers in their clutches for well over a year, it is unlikely that they have not extracted a few useful bits of information.
The French kindly warned us about some Algerians, probably a cell, but nothing to pin on them except a dead policeman. It makes one wonder what what they got from the rest, I doubt torture would be needed - just sight of a plane ticket to Algiers.
It is probably not worth us speculating on the subject.
That speech was from a ventroloquist’s dummy, and the ventroloquist was targetting a small and distinct audience.