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« They "Lost" It | Main | You Mean "Abstinence Only" Doesn't Work? »

Recent Airline Scare Just A Political Ploy?

Here's a UK Ambassador's take on the recent arrests in Britain resulting in the ban on liquids and reading material on flights.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.

...

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.

Could just be conspiracy theory stuff, but it's worth considering. Definitely any "confessions" garnered from interrogation by torture is suspect, to say the least. With the November elections coming up and all polls saying the American public thinks Bush and Co. screwed up, they could use something to get us pissing in our pants again.

And while we're speaking crazy theories, who wants to place some bets on nuclear war in the middle east?

By min | August 16, 2006, 3:19 PM | Liberal Outrage