Lots of news coming out about the new terrorist plot, plus a ton of great editorials. So lets get to it.
First is the new information on the plot:
It all began with a tip: In the aftermath of the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings on London's transit system, British authorities received a call from a worried member of the Muslim community, reporting general suspicions about an acquaintance.
From that vague but vital piece of information, according to a senior European intelligence official, British authorities opened the investigation into what they said turned out to be a well-coordinated and long-planned plot to bomb multiple transatlantic flights heading toward the United States — an assault designed to rival the scope and lethality of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings.
By late 2005, the probe had expanded to involve several hundred investigators on three continents. They kept dozens of suspects under close surveillance for months, even as some of the plotters traveled between Britain and Pakistan to raise money, find recruits and refine their scheme, according to interviews with U.S. and European counterterrorism officials.
It appears that they had wanted to keep this group, or groups under surveillance for much longer but became worried when two of the suspects dropped out of sight:
Some U.S. counterterrorism officials said plans originally were to allow the conspiracy to develop even further. But U.S. and British investigators made a sudden decision this week to close down the operation after they became increasingly worried that there were other bombers they had been unable to locate or identify, U.S. officials said.
The Daily Mail is reporting that the target date for these terrorists was Aug 16th:
Terrorists were planning to unleash a series of deadly mid-air explosions on flights between London and America on August 16, it has been revealed today.
Plus the terrorists bank accounts were all frozen by the Bank of England.
We all suspect that there has to be a American connection to this plot since calls were made into the US (Ahem – NSA Wiretaps) and ABC appears to be investigating that side of the case:
U.S. law enforcement sources tell ABC News the FBI is investigating new leads that involve a possible connection between people in the United States, in major east coast cities, and the London bomb plotters.
In an interview with ABC News this morning, White House Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend said while there is currently no indication of any plotting in the United States, she confirmed, "There are leads that the FBI is running."
[…]Intelligence officials tell ABC News the plot's trail leads directly to al Qaeda and to the Pakistani city of Karachi, where money for the plot was wired to London.
Officials say two of those arrested in London came to Karachi in the last few months for explosives training with known al Qaeda commanders.
Additionally large sums of money was transferred from Pakistan to the ringleaders to buy the plane tickets:
Last night US officials told reporters that substantial sums of money had been wired from Pakistan to two of the alleged ringleaders in Britain, so that they could purchase airline tickets.
That same article quotes Pakistani officials as saying there is evidence of a Al-Qaeda link:
Pakistan said today that its security forces had arrested a "key person" in the alleged transatlantic terror plot, who is the brother of one of the 24 men held by police in a dramatic dawn swoop in the UK yesterday.
Rashid Rauf was arrested in the Punjab on Wednesday, hours before the simultaneous raids in Birmingham, Buckinghamshire and London that brought Britain's airports to a standstill yesterday.
Among the two men arrested in Birmingham was Tayib Rauf, Mr Rauf's brother.
[…]A Pakistani Foreign Ministry statement named Mr Rauf as a "key person" in the plot and said that the arrests underscored "the very important role that has been played by Pakistan in breaking this international terrorist network".
Without elaborating, the Foreign Ministry said there were "indications of Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda connection".
Plus they elaborate on how the Aug 16th date may have been discovered:
The Evening Standard reported that two airline tickets for United Airlines flights from London to America today and Wednesday had also been discovered, but this was not confirmed. The Standard speculated that the second ticket indicated that next Wednesday – August 16, or 16/8 – was to have been the date of the alleged plot.
Which may mean the dry run was scheduled for that date….but who knows.
The planes targeted were those headed to five different US cities:
Meetings of the Government's Cobra emergency unit were told that the first wave of bombings was to have targeted five aircraft leaving British airports in the next few days. The destinations, US officials said, were New York, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles.
And surveillance indicated that the suspects had discussed blowing them up over the water but also to blow them over the cities:
Surveillance on internet traffic between the suspected terrorists indicated that they had considered setting off their devices simultaneously in mid-Atlantic but had also discussed trying to blow up the aircraft as they circled above the destination cities. The aim was to cause maximum death and destruction in the air and on American soil.
And finally the plot is quite similar to the early 90's plot hatched by Ramzi Yousef:
The plot, which at first was considered too far-fetched, had echoes of an al-Qaeda plan, codenamed Bojinka and discovered in the Philippines in the mid-1990s, to use explosives in bottles in attacks on aircraft.
Yousef being a high level Al-Qaeda operative.
Names of those arrested are:
Umir Hussain, 24, London E14
Muhammed Usman Saddique, 24, London E17
Waheed Zaman, 22, London E17
Assan Abdullah Khan, 22, London E17
Waseem Kayani, 28, High Wycombe
Waheed Arafat Khan, 24, London E17
Cossor Ali, 24, London E17
Tayib Rauf, 21, Birmingham
Ibrahim Savant, 26, London E17
Osman Adam Khatib, 20, London E17
Shamin Mohammed Uddin, 36, Stoke Newington
Amin Asmin Tariq, 23, London E17
Shazad Khuram Ali, 27, High Wycombe
Tanvir Hussain, 24, London E10
Umar Islam, 28, (born Brian Young) High Wycombe
Assad Sarwar, 25, High Wycombe
Abdullah Ali, 26, London E17
Abdul Muneem Patel, 17, London E5
Nabeel Hussain, 21, Waltham Forest
Plus: Abdul Waheed, 21, from High Wycombe (formerly known as Don Stewart-Whyte)
Meanwhile The Opinion Journal has an excellent editorial in which they take the Democrats to task:
[…]It's not as if the "Islamic fascists"–to borrow President Bush's description yesterday–haven't been trying to hit us. They took more than 50 lives last year in London with the "7/7" subway bombings. There was the catastrophic attack in Madrid the year before that left nearly 200 dead. But there have also been successes. Some have been publicized, such as a foiled plot to poison Britain's food supply with ricin. But undoubtedly many have not, because authorities don't want to compromise sources and methods, or because the would-be terrorists have been captured or killed before they could carry out their plans.
[…]The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs.
And almost on political cue yesterday, Members of the Congressional Democratic leadership were using the occasion to suggest that the U.S. is actually more vulnerable today despite this antiterror success. Harry Reid, who's bidding to run the Senate as Majority Leader, saw it as one more opportunity to insist that "the Iraq war has diverted our focus and more than $300 billion in resources from the war on terrorism and has created a rallying cry for international terrorists."
Ted Kennedy chimed in that "it is clear that our misguided policies are making America more hated in the world and making the war on terrorism harder to win." Mr. Kennedy somehow overlooked that the foiled plan was nearly identical to the "Bojinka" plot led by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to blow up airliners over the Pacific Ocean in 1995. Did the Clinton Administration's "misguided policies" invite that plot? And if the Iraq war is a diversion and provocation, just what policies would Senators Reid and Kennedy have us "focus" on?
Surveillance? Hmmm. Democrats and their media allies screamed bloody murder last year when it was leaked that the government was monitoring some communications outside the context of a law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA wasn't designed for, nor does it forbid, the timely exploitation of what are often anonymous phone numbers, and the calls monitored had at least one overseas connection. But Mr. Reid labeled such surveillance "illegal" and an "NSA domestic spying program." Other Democrats are still saying they will censure, or even impeach, Mr. Bush over the FISA program if they win control of Congress.
This year the attempt to paint Bush Administration policies as a clear and present danger to civil liberties continued when USA Today hyped a story on how some U.S. phone companies were keeping call logs. The obvious reason for such logs is that the government might need them to trace the communications of a captured terror suspect. And then there was the recent brouhaha when the New York Times decided news of a secret, successful and entirely legal program to monitor bank transfers between bad guys was somehow in the "public interest" to expose.
For that matter, we don't recall most advocates of a narrowly "focused" war on terror having many kind words for the Patriot Act, which broke down what in the 1990s was a crippling "wall" of separation between our own intelligence and law-enforcement agencies. Senator Reid was "focused" enough on this issue to brag, prematurely as it turned out, that he had "killed" its reauthorization.
[…]In short, Democrats who claim to want "focus" on the war on terror have wanted it fought without the intelligence, interrogation and detention tools necessary to win it. And if they cite "cooperation" with our allies as some kind of magical answer, they should be reminded that the British and other European legal systems generally permit far more intrusive surveillance and detention policies than the Bush Administration has ever contemplated. Does anyone think that when the British interrogate those 20 or so suspects this week that they will recoil at harsh or stressful questioning?
[…]As the time since 9/11 has passed, many of America's elites have begun to portray U.S. government policies as a greater threat than the terrorists themselves. George Soros and others have said this explicitly, and their political allies in Congress and the media have staged a relentless campaign against the very practices that saved innocent lives this week. We doubt that many Americans who will soon board an airplane agree.
All the while the left is onto another conspiracy….mainly that these arrests were engineered by Bush, Cheney and Rove because Lieberman lost. It's so dumbfoundingly ignorant that I have trouble believing they actually believe this, but as we have all learned throughout the years…the left can be a ignorant schizophrenic bunch.
Mike Gallagher see's the Lamont win as a sign that the left has totally gone over the deep end with their calls to cut and run:
Lamont beat Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut primary with a simple, solid, consistent drumbeat of a theme: we need to tuck tail and lose the war in Iraq immediately. No more fighting, forget any progress made in that troubled part of the world, we just need to get out, he says. Now.
When a slick millionaire cable executive is able to articulate that position of failure, it appears that enough Connecticut Democrats will swallow it. Frankly, it does seem mildly appealing, at least to the simple-minded. Who likes hearing about American soldiers coming home in body bags? How many obituaries showing young, fresh faces can we bear to see?
But even a person of limited intelligence and wisdom is able to absorb the events of the past two days and see how foolish and ridiculous Lamont's position really is.
Somehow, the loony left has managed to convince a fair number of Americans that Iraq has nothing to do with Al-Qaeda or terrorism. I don't quite know how they've managed to do that. A simple Google search of legitimate, reliable news sources can confirm the miles and miles of irrefutable connections between the bad guys of Iraq and the bad guys of terrorism.
You don't believe me? Go ahead and look it up. Ask where the mastermind of the Achille Lauro hijacking fled after slaughtering an American named Leon Klinghoffer, way back in 1985. You doubt the connections? Find out where the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing sought – and received – safe harbor. I'll give you a hint: they were sheltered in a city spelled B-a-g-h-d-a-d.
Furthermore, investigate the mountains of documents confirming meetings between top level Al-Qaeda leaders and high-ranking members of the Iraqi government.
No, the anti-war voices in America are lying when they say there is no connection between Iraq and terrorism. And they know it.
So now that we know that another 9/11-type attack was nearly successful, what could Ned Lamont possibly say?
And then shares a call he had to his radio show that is wake up call to those who believe that the majority of the left are not like Lamont and Sheehan:
Callers to my radio show today ran the gamut over this latest example of terrorist threats. One man made the perfect analogy, comparing the way we teach our children to stand up to the schoolyard bully to the way the United States is leading the world-wide war on terror. "Every culture understands this concept", he said. "If the bully is left alone, he never goes away. Ned Lamont and many liberal Democrats think if we leave the terrorists alone, they'll just peacefully mind their own business, never bothering us again." I thought his point was terrific.
And then there was Amanda.
She was calling from Colorado, and she chastised me for embracing violence as a solution to violence. "You right-wingers love blood and guts and you never have any sympathy for the other side", she said. "The other side?" I asked. "You mean the terrorists?" She responded with a sneer in her voice: "You just don't understand. They feel that WE'RE the terrorists. You conservatives are wrong in defining this war as something between good and evil."
I had just about had enough. "Amanda, let me ask you something", I said. "Do you consider the 19 hijackers of 9/11 evil?" Long pause. "No, I do not," she replied. "We should look at ourselves to discover what we did to make them hate us so much. This is all our fault."
Make no mistake, this woman was serious. I actually told her I hoped she was a comedienne, someone making a prank call to a national radio show. She assured me that she was not. So I had to ask her what she did for a living. Her answer will haunt me for a long, long time: "I'm a schoolteacher."
We are fighting a two front war. A war against terror and a war against those who think like Amanda. Those who would have us surrender because we are the real evil in this world.
Other's Blogging:
- Blue Crab Boulevard
- American Future
- Say Anything
- Patterico's Pontifications
- The Unalienable Right
- Captain's Quarters
- Political Animal
- The Anchoress
- Wizbang
- Counterterrorism Blog
- The Strata-Sphere
- Hot Air
All the while the left is onto another conspiracy….mainly that these arrests were engineered by Bush, Cheney and Rove because Lieberman lost. It’s so dumbfoundingly ignorant that I have trouble believing they actually believe this, but as we have all learned throughout the years…the left can be a ignorant schizophrenic bunch.

See author page
MPAC False Claim: Local Muslims Foiled UK Terror Plot
http://www.terrorfreeoil.org/videos/MS081106.php – video