Reply With Quote
So far, it looks that way.
Hopefully, people like you haven't so damaged our ability to surveil these pieces of trash that we can't discover their plot -- even if by incompetents -- before it's too late.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=3336148
A secret U.S. law enforcement report, prepared for the Department of Homeland Security, warns that al Qaeda is planning a terror "spectacular" this summer, according to a senior official with access to the do ent.
"This is reminiscent of the warnings and intelligence we were getting in the summer of 2001," the official told ABCNews.com.
U.S. officials have kept the information secret, and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said today on ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" that the United States did not have "have any specific credible evidence that there's an attack focused on the United States at this point."
As ABCNews.com reported, U.S. law enforcement officials received intelligence reports two weeks ago warning of terror attacks in Glasgow and Prague, the Czech Republic, against "airport infrastructure and aircraft."
The warnings apparently never reached officials in Scotland, who said this weekend they had received "no advance intelligence" that Glasgow might be a target.
Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff declined to comment specifically on on the report today, but said "everything that we get is shared virtually instantaneously with our counterparts in Britain and vice versa."
Unlike the United States, officials in Germany have publicly warned that the country could face a major attack this summer, also comparing the situation to the pre-9/11 summer of 2001.
Luckily we are fighting them in Iraq..Or according to Yoni they are sending their 2nd string bomb makers...
So far, it looks that way.
Hopefully, people like you haven't so damaged our ability to surveil these pieces of trash that we can't discover their plot -- even if by incompetents -- before it's too late.
Well if we get hit again the Iraqi liberation was a complete failure..
How have "we" damaged our ability to surveil? It certainly hasn't stop the FBI from running roughshod with their new Patriot Act powers.
Again with the absolutist characterizations.
I think that would depend on the severity of the attack, don't you?
But, by the same token, I could make the claim that if we get hit again, it is because of all the ways the left has frustrated efforts to detect and prevent domestic terrorism.
So the ridiculous slogan "we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here" is just bumper sticker talk!
How, exactly, have "the left" frustrated efforts to detect and prevent domestic terrorism?
Right, because we should avail all our rights so that we can be "safe" by our governments defintion?
The phrase "slippery slope" wasnt coined because it sounds funny. It was declared in the inevitability of those granted power to abuse said power.
Why are you so confident that the government will protect YOU, Yoni? Because youre white and Republican?
Youre not even going to be a majority in this country in 20 years. YOU'LL be the minority. YOU will be gazed upon with prying eyes. All someone has to do is name you, and your dance with freedom will be over.
This is a question for GGA and Pixel Pusher....
What would you rather have happen?
A) John Stewart nut on your face
B) Blow your entire load after a terrorist attack because you will have ample reason to politicize the attack against The WOT.
C) Have barrack obama dogfart your mom...
Ask yourself, you're the one obsessed with him.
This question belongs to Yoni, who would no doubt fill endless threads on how it's all the left's fault for not being patriotic enough.
Nice to see Barakophobia is still in full effect.
Do you really think that Osama is going to divulge his plans to some second stringers?
Besides, it's pretty ing obvious (and has been stated by OBL before) that his goal is multiple nukes going off in the U.S. at once.
Well, what'cha gonna do when your A-string Zarqawis are rotting in ?
Well, then you should be behind the federal government's efforts to detect and prevent such an event.
Okay, the improper use of the word "avail" aside, (I think I get your drift), name one right of which you've "availed" yourself. Just one.
Every wartime abuse of presidential power -- save the Roosevelt New Deal -- has been corrected by subsequent legislation and judicial intervention. What slippery slope are you suggesting the other branches can't fix?
Who says I'm confident? And, what's race or party affiliation got to do with preventing a terrorist attack?
I'm not confident. Particularly after witnessing the depths to which Democrats and idiots will go to undermine this President's efforts.
Okay, now you're blithering.
yoni has yet offer any evidence of how anybody has shackled dubya and head from doing the nastiness dubya, and above all head, want to do, like starting a bogus war for oil.
Quite the opposite, dubya and head have ed up Aghanistan, Iraq, the war on terror, Katrina, etc, completely on their own, getting a pass from an intimiated press before Iraq and full rubber stamping support from Congress until Nov06.
Yeah, those Nov 6 elections really showed him. That's when the American people voted for a change of course and to bring our troops home, and the newly elected Democratic officials went right to work on that...until Bush told them no and they agreed to give him his money for the war anyways. But let's not forget they made a great stand on calling for a vote of no confidence against the Attorney General.
Lets have more rhetoric about change and how bad this president is, but no action.
I guess that you are quite satisfied that has bent you over for over 6 yrs now without as much as a kiss. I guess we could classify you as a taker..
Former Spook comments on information emerging from coverage of the London terror attacks that al-Qaeda is planning a 9/11 style series of attacks on the US. But out of weakness, not out of strength. I tend to agree with his assessment.
Some people are going to call Former Spook's analysis a kind of wishful thinking. But there is one aspect of his analysis which understates, rather than overstates, his conclusion. By bringing to the forces of radical Islam to battle, the US has achieved two things. First, as American critics have pointed out, it has allowed al-Qaeda to generate recruits to fight America. But secondly -- and this is the neglected half of the equation -- al-Qaeda's operations have allowed America to get recruits to fight them. The Anbar tribes are a good example. al-Qaeda's activities have generated a backlash of their own and they're feeling the pinch.
Any reasonable person will probably concede -- without necessarily buying into Former Spook's analysis -- that this worldwide engagement certainly imposes a load on al-Qaeda. Even assuming it gained more recruits from its war with America, those recruits would still have to be trained, armed and fed. The critical question is whether al-Qaeda has lost more than it has gained by this process. Former Spook appears to be arguing that al-Qaeda is stalled and needs a win to convince its own backers, (their own version of the U.S. Congress, and maybe the U.S. Congress itself) that some sort of victory is possible and the thing won't drag on forever.
One possible item in Former Spook's favor is the recent attack in London and Glasgow. Al-Qaeda's attack cell in Britain consists of 3 or more medical doctors. Using doctors as suicide bombers, as one of the Glasgow attackers appeared to be, especially when they are "cleanskins" is an incredibly wasteful given their potential as sleeper agents or leaders. There cannot be so many al-Qaeda agents that they can afford to use neurologists as hit men. This suggests a certain level of eagerness to make a big publicity splash that is inconsistent with confident strength. It also suggests their rank of available jihadis in the west may be depleted to the point they're having to expend more valuable resources.
We fight them over there so we don't have to here. Here, in former spook's analysis, you see that principle at work.
CBS News reported this morning that the attacks in Britain started with a proposal by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to infiltrate the West. At least one of the attackers got their training in Zarqawi's organization, and the use of doctors was a deliberate part of the deception:
It's still early in the investigation, and more information may change some of the conclusions drawn from this attack. However, the failures of all three attacks have allowed the British to get a much clearer picture of the conspiracy sooner than with the 7/7 attacks two years ago, chiefly because they caught everyone alive. They have been able to roll up an international network comprised mainly of physicians, and have learned that that is no coincidence.
Why physicians? The British had a fast-track entry program to get doctors into the country from abroad. Does that sound familiar? The US had a similar system for students before 9/11.
This tells us that the jihad in Iraq presents a direct threat to the West, and that it didn't begin with the invasion -- and the invasion didn't entirely stop it, either. Zarqawi had set up shop in Iraq before the Americans arrived with the complicity of the Iraqi government and ramped up his organization in the aftermath of the invasion. He had always threatened to reach outside of Iraq with AQ-Iraq, and almost a year after reaching room temperature, he almost succeeded.
This should make it official -- Iraq is a center in the war against radical Islamist terrorism. People can debate whether it would have been so absent an American invasion honestly and with evidence to support either position, but none can escape the fact that al-Qaeda operates in Iraq and that they have used that base to attack the West at home. They failed, which gives us optimism that we can beat them both at home and in Iraq, but it doesn't negate the threat.
Congress will debate the Iraq war policy in the next two months. They need to recognize that we cannot simply disengage and allow Iraq to serve as a base of operations for al-Qaeda. In the event of a successful attack from this group, we would have to re-invade all over again. Better that we stomp out AQI now and ensure a stable Iraq that can keep terrorists out in the long term than to pretend that the biggest problem in Iraq is the American forces fighting the terrorists.
We fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here. Can I get a show of hands? Who is opposed to interrogating every physician, here on a Visa, from any Islamic country? Not me. I say start the questioning and surveilling.
Besides, I thought they were attacking us because they disaffected and poverty-stricken Muslims lured into Jihad by promises of glory in martyrdom. Whatever happened to that, anyway?
Still not convinced?
There are now five jihadi doctors implicated in the London/Glasgow car bomb attempts. The latest is a doctor in Australia. Some are expressing shock that highly educated medical professionals are accused of participating in attacks with al Qaeda’s fingerprints all over them. Those shocked experts are either profoundly blind or suffering from toddler-age attention spans. al Qaeda honcho Ayman Zawahiri is a doctor. So is former Hamas biggie Abdel Rantissi. And the woman pictured on the below?
She’s Affia Siddiqui–a Pakistani who studied microbiology at MIT and did graduate work in neurology at Brandeis. The FBI has been seeking information about her whereabouts since 9/11.
Back in 2004, Newsweek reported on her al Qaeda-linked activities and that of her estranged husband–also a doctor:
Our Hot Air report tracing the Baltimore plot and Siddiqui’s role as the suspected fixer for al Qaeda is here.
Why doctors? Well, they had been able to evade national security scrutiny by immigration officials who didn’t realize the threat they posed and their education and expertise have helped advance the jihadi plots.
Those who are expressing shock, shock at the presence of medical professionals in the al Qaeda world haven’t been paying enough attention.
From a letter to the editor by a confessed jihadist:
Read the entire letter. I posted it in another thread but, thought it relevant to the "we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here" argument.
I'd settle for vigilant.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289028,00.html
AP: Government Report Concludes Al Qaeda Now as Strong as in Summer of 2001
Thursday, July 12, 2007
E-MAIL STORY PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION
WASHINGTON — A new threat assessment from U.S. counterterrorism analysts says that Al Qaeda has used its safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border to restore its operating capabilities to a level unseen since the months before Sept. 11, 2001.
A counterterrorism official familiar with a five-page summary of the do ent — led "Al Qaeda better positioned to strike the West" — called it a stark appraisal. The analysis will be part of a broader meeting at the White House on Thursday about an upcoming National Intelligence Estimate.
The official and others spoke to The Associated Press on condition they not be identified because the report remains classified.
The findings suggests that the network that launched the most devastating terror attack on U.S. soil has been able to regroup despite nearly six years of bombings, war and other tactics aimed at dismantling it.
The threat assessment focuses on the terror group's safe haven in Pakistan and makes a range of observations about the threat posed to the United States and its allies, officials said.
Counterterrorism officials have been increasingly concerned about Al Qaeda's recent operations. This week, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he had a "gut feeling" that the United States faced a heightened risk of attack this summer.
Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff Warns of Increased Summertime Al Qaeda Threat Report: U.S. Aborted Raid on Al Qaeda Leaders in Pakistan in 2005 Still, numerous government officials say they know of no specific, credible threat of a new attack on U.S. soil.
Al Qaeda is "considerably operationally stronger than a year ago" and has "regrouped to an extent not seen since 2001," the counterterrorism official said, paraphrasing the report's conclusions. "They are showing greater and greater ability to plan attacks in Europe and the United States."
The group also has created "the most robust training program since 2001, with an interest in using European operatives," the official quoted the report as saying.
At the same time, this official said, the report speaks of "significant gaps in intelligence" so U.S. authorities may be ignorant of potential or planned attacks.
John Kringen, who heads the CIA's analysis directorate, echoed the concerns about Al Qaeda's resurgence during testimony and conversations with reporters at a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday.
"They seem to be fairly well settled into the safe haven and the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan," Kringen testified. "We see more training. We see more money. We see more communications. We see that activity rising."
The threat assessment comes as the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies prepare a National Intelligence Estimate focusing on threats to the United States. A senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity while the high-level analysis was being completed, said the do ent has been in the works for roughly two years.
Kringen and aides to National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell would not comment on the details of that analysis.
"Preparation of the estimate is not a response to any specific threat," McConnell's spokesman Ross Feinstein said, adding that it probably will be ready for distribution this summer.
Kringen said he wouldn't attach a summer time frame to the concern. In studying the threat, he said he begins with the premise that Al Qaeda would consider attacking the U.S. a "home run hit" and that the easiest way to get into the United States would be through Europe.
Several European countries — among them Britain, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands — are highlighted in the threat assessment partly because they have arrangements with the Pakistani government that allow their citizens easier access to Pakistan than others, according to the counterterrorism official.
This is more troubling because all four are part of the U.S. visa waiver program, and their citizens can enter the United States without additional security scrutiny, the official said.
The Bush administration has repeatedly cited Al Qaeda as a key justification for continuing the fight in Iraq.
"The No. 1 enemy in Iraq is Al Qaeda," White House press secretary Tony Snow said Wednesday. "Al Qaeda continues to be the chief organizer of mayhem within Iraq."
The findings could bolster the president's hand at a moment when support on Capitol Hill for the war is eroding and the administration is struggling to defend its decision for a military buildup in Iraq.
The threat assessment says that Al Qaeda stepped up efforts to "improve its core operational capability" in late 2004 but did not succeed until December of 2006 after the Pakistani government signed a peace agreement with tribal leaders that effectively removed government military presence from the northwest frontier with Afghanistan.
The agreement allows Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives to move across the border with impunity and establish and run training centers, the report says, according to the official.
It also says that Al Qaeda is particularly interested in building up the numbers in its middle ranks, or operational positions, so there is not as great a lag in attacks when such people are killed.
"Being No. 3 in Al Qaeda is a bad job. We regularly get to the No. 3 person," Tom Fingar, the top U.S. intelligence analyst, told the House panel.
The report also notes that Al Qaeda has increased its public statements, although analysts stressed that those video and audio messages aren't reliable indicators of the actions the group may take.
I'm just thankful that we started the war in Iraq so we could kill them there...
Terrorist want to terrorize us.
So does Chertoff.
So, to summarize...
The surge in Iraq is working becuase al-Qaeda is weaker than ever before, except that they're stronger than they've been since 2001 because of their base in Pakistan.
They are planning summer attacks in the U.S. because they are weak and desperate, and also because they are strong and confident.
I keep getting mixed signals.
Sounds like an ad for a musical.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
