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Hmmm, not quite sure what to think about this info. presented just yet. Perhaps more will come about in the future on this. Then again, perhaps not. Who knows.
And while I do NOT by any means directly point a finger at Bush here, his previous actions of foiling a covert British operation to infiltrate the Al Qaeda network in Great Britain also cannot be overlooked. As Steve Soto over at The Left Coaster points out:
| quote: | Lastly, as Tony Blair oversees the carnage and anger in his country, he may want to ask his good buddy George W. Bush why his administration crippled Blair’s domestic anti-terror efforts to track down and stop Al Qaeda cells inside Great Britain by exposing a known Al Qaeda asset at a time when the Brits were very close to nailing a ring of Al Qaeda cells inside the country? With today's tragedy in front of them, don't you think that British intelligence would have wanted to finish their work last fall in smashing London's Al Qaeda cells before the Bush Administration blew a covert operation just so Bush could be reelected?
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/004815.php |
Links provided in the block quote:
http://www.juancole.com/2004_08_01_...185597245383648
http://schumer.senate.gov/SchumerWe...aeda080904.html
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/defaul...8-8-2004_pg7_42
Specific quote from the dailytimes link:
| quote: |
On 2 August, the Bush administration blew the cover of double agent Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan. A day earlier, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge had announced a new alert against an Al Qaeda plan to attack financial institutions in New York and Washington. When the New York Times pressed certain administration officials for more information, they disclosed to the newspaper that the information regarding the Al Qaeda plot had come from a recently arrested man in Pakistan named "Khan." The New York Times published his name on Monday. The later editions spelt out the full name.
Prof. Juan Cole of the University of Michigan's analysis is more daring, "The announcement of Khan's name forced the British to arrest 12 members of an al-Qaeda cell prematurely, before they had finished gathering the necessary evidence against them via Khan. Apparently they feared that the cell members would scatter as soon as they saw that Khan had been compromised. (They would have known he was a double agent, since they got emails from him Sunday and Monday!) One of the 12 has already had to be released for lack of evidence, a further fallout of the Bush SNAFU (situation normal all fouled up). It would be interesting to know if other cell members managed to flee. Why in the world would Bush administration officials out a double agent working for Pakistan and the US against Al-Qaeda? |
And yes, it does beg the question here on what exactly is this Administration's efforts to effectively curb global terrorism by invading Iraq, especially when it has now become a leading global terrorist training ground:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050622...ity_iraq_cia_dc
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/w...anguage=printer
And in case anyone was wondering about that report that came out stating that terrorist attacks had more than tripled in 2004 (totalling 651)? Welp, that number was actually just slightly off:
| quote: |
The Bush administration on Tuesday released new figures for global terrorism that showed there were almost 3,200 terrorist incidents worldwide in 2004.
In April the US State Department had said there were 651 "international" terrorism incidents last year. But using a broader definition to include attacks that "deliberately hit civilians or non-combatants" the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) on Tuesday raised that number to 3,192. The incidents resulted in the deaths, injury or kidnapping of almost 28,500 people.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ac120644-e...000e2511c8.html |
So again I ask, what exactly has this Administration done that has been truly effective in fighting off global terrorism?
___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
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