'Plot to blow up planes' foiled

[ledhed]

We supported Iraq in their war with Iran because we'd given the deposed shah sanctuary, and believed the revolutionary government would be overthrown and the shah restored. We supported the effort with conventional arms. There has NEVER been a case of the U.S. providing WMDs to any nation anywhere on earth, even allies. We may stock them at our bases in an allied nation, but that nation has no access to them.

Turkey never used chemical, biological or gas weapons on the kurds. Unfortunately, the Kurds in question were an "invading" force of refugees (if refugees can be a force. . .) that were being turned back. I'm not denying that there is considerable ethnic and religious tension in Turkey, as in the entire Middle East.

I have watched the news. I watched it while it was happening, I don't need to find the archives.

Please keep in mind that the government is not the only source of information, therefore not the only source of "lies." Why do you assume the "news" is any more truthful than anything else you see or hear? There is so little real news on these days. Most of what we see is editorialization or opinion broadcasts.

Well I guess you paid a little attention in school...not much but better than most...for example you know that the US gave the Shah " sanctuary "...well we did ...he had cancer and was dying and had been a stalwart ally...say what you will but we stood by him as he stood by the US...then he died...so much for restoring the Shah ...now the Iranians DID hold Americans hostage for 444 or so days and it was on the news every day..and they did support hezbollah who kidnapped people in lebenon and bblew up a few hundred sleeping Marines in Beruit..so you may say the current revolutionary regime in Iran is a sworn enemy of the US .

The fact that we didn't care to see Iran export its brand of Islamic revolution to the oil region and destabilise the region along with the fact that we really cant stand tthat current regime..caused us to support Iraq..and .Saddam with intelligence and some logistical report..a few helicopters and some other aid , the aid was a minor prtion as nothing in the US arsenal was compatibile with Saddams Soviet equiped military..but the intell saved his ass.

We started backing off with support when he started using chemical weapons . But we did reflag tankers and attack Iranian gun boats and minelayers and fought a small navaal war the keep the straights of hormuz open and insure the world..along with the US ...got its oil fix .

The revolutionary Islamic government in Iran has not yet or since it was formed shown any sign of being close to being " overthrown ." .

 

[den brakke]

We don't have to clone him. He can do that himself.

Budget airlines can get Jean Claude van Damme.

Or Mel Gibson. No wait, he'l just blame some jews for those terrorist atacks.

How about Steven Segal? He can sing them to death.

 

[DuckRacer]

Or Mel Gibson. No wait, he'l just blame some jews for those terrorist atacks.

How about Steven Segal? He can sing them to death.

Or how about the Aflac duck? He can kick killer spitballs at the terrorists.

Ok, let's get back on topic.

 

[Kylehnat]

Hi all! I just got back from the most horrible 3 days of travel anyone could imagine! And even though I am here and my suitcase is not, I am very relieved to be back in this chair typing mindless drivel on GTP.

Situation: I had a job interview scheduled for Friday at 9 AM in Virginia (which is on the other U.S. coast for those not familiar with geography). The plan was to be flown out on Thursday, interview and tour the town on Friday, and come home on Saturday. It looked like it was going to be a smooth schedule, and I'd have some time to poke around eastern Virginia on Friday afternoon, which I was really looking forward to.

I woke up Thursday morning, and saw what happened in London. I had scheduled a ride to the airport so that I would get there two hours early, which is usually more than enough at SeaTac, so I figured even with extra security, it would probably be okay. Wrong. The Port of Seattle (they run the airport) was caught with its pants down, and they were not prepared for the huge flux of people that came to the airport around 6 AM. The line for security was an absolute mess, and it took 2 hours just to get through. Now, most airlines sent representatives into the security holding area to let people know that they were holding planes 30-45 minutes to account for the long security wait, so people shouldn't worry. Except Delta, the airline I was flying on. They insisted that they must be on-time or the world will implode on itself. My plane was to leave at 8:00 AM, and I cleared the security checkpoint at 8:05 (after throwing away my ChapStick ). I ran down to the gate, praying to God (surprising given my stance on religion), and fortunately, I was able to board. But, I was one of the last people to board. I was also one of the only people to board. Because of the security lines, and Delta's jack-assery, the plane, bound for New York, had maybe 25% of its passengers. At least 150 people missed the flight because of the long security delays. The two guys who were in the security queue directly behind me did not make the flight. According to my mom's account of an article in the Seattle Times, Seattle had the longest security waits of anywhere in the country (but not as bad as Britain ): up to FOUR hours.

Thanks, you asshole coward terrorists.

To sum up the rest of my travel story (it took me almost an hour to fully recount it to a friend over IM, so I'll spare the details ): Due to many, many circumstances, I was stranded in New York for 16 hours (I was only supposed to have a 3 hour layover, but instead was there overnight), and due to Delta's stupidity and slow thinking, I was delayed leaving Richmond, which caused me to nearly miss my Atlanta-Seattle flight today (and my suitcase did).

Fortunately, the company I interviewed with was VERY sympathetic and accomidating (I had been keeping them abreast as to where I was and what was going on). Despite only having 7 total hours of sleep over two nights, the interview went very, very well

Oh, don't EVER, EVER fly with Delta. They just straight-up suck.

 

[wfooshee]

Here's the rub though - if you take action based on "x", but "x" turns out to be false, the action is not justified.

If you take action based on "x" when you have every reason to believe "x" is true and verified fact, then the action is justified. 20/20 hindsight does not change the original justification.

If you believe that the intelligence given was knowingly forwarded as false, then you have a genuine point, obviously, and one I will not argue against. I personally do not believe that to be the case.

I don't recall anybody saying worldwide deployment on 45 minutes' notice. WMDs were taken to be a serious danger to the region, though, including Israel, and the oil fields, which Saddam already had a history with in his retreat from Kuwait.

You are far removed from the realities and dangers

My son and a nephew served a year in Iraq, with the nephew among the paratroopers on the first Fallujah drop. Now tell me again that I'm removed from the situation.

I know of a foiled plot to destroy tunnels and bridges to Manhattan, and of course the topic of this thread, the targeting of US-bound airliners. Apparently there was also another set of hijacked-airliners-into-buildings plot that were foiled in '02 against the west coast, and '03 against the east coast.

I another post in this thread, I pointed out how close geographically Great Britain is to the homeland of these people. I've never claimed to be more involved in the U.S., or that Britain had less to be concerned about.

I have not made a single "defensive" statement in any of my posts, unless defending the actions of my President is defensive. He had reliable intelligence that the region surrounding Iraq was in danger of being targeted very shortly by at least chemical weapons, if not something worse. He acted decisively on that information. My single point in all my posts on this matter is that reacting to intelligence believed to be genuine at the time is responsible leadership, not lying to the people.

Your statement "Our war on terror is their war in Islam" is not well-phrased, at least to my American English. I know what you meant, and even said so in my reply, which point you seem to have glossed over in your response.

In my "evidence has been found" post, I made a point of saying that I don't want to see anybody using the argument that the end justifies the means, even though it would be ludicrously easy to do so.

 

[Famine]

I don't recall anybody saying worldwide deployment on 45 minutes' notice. WMDs were taken to be a serious danger to the region, though, including Israel, and the oil fields, which Saddam already had a history with in his retreat from Kuwait.

It has to be said that no-one in government ever actually stated that the 45 minute claim applied to strategic deployment. However, the original thesis from which the "dodgy dossier" was copied made that very clear - but those words were removed.

When released, this paragraph was interpreted by several sources as referring to strategic AND battlefield weapons - to the point where several papers carried headlines to that effect - and this "mistake" was never corrected by Downing Street.

 

[magburner]

My son and a nephew served a year in Iraq, with the nephew among the paratroopers on the first Fallujah drop. Now tell me again that I'm removed from the situation.

I know of a foiled plot to destroy tunnels and bridges to Manhattan, and of course the topic of this thread, the targeting of US-bound airliners. Apparently there was also another set of hijacked-airliners-into-buildings plot that were foiled in '02 against the west coast, and '03 against the east coast.

We have soldiers fighting in the Iraq/Afghanistan too, I was talking about the terrorists we 'apparently' have living amongst us. Personally, it is scary to think that people we live with want to destroy us. When I said 'far removed' I was trying to say that you don't have such a hotbed of resentment that we have here in the UK. Maybe I should of made that point a little clearer.

I have not made a single "defensive" statement in any of my posts, unless defending the actions of my President is defensive. He had reliable intelligence that the region surrounding Iraq was in danger of being targeted very shortly by at least chemical weapons, if not something worse. He acted decisively on that information. My single point in all my posts on this matter is that reacting to intelligence believed to be genuine at the time is responsible leadership, not lying to the people.

Your statement "Our war on terror is their war in Islam" is not well-phrased, at least to my American English. I know what you meant, and even said so in my reply, which point you seem to have glossed over in your response.

How else could I of worded that statement? It seems perfectly simple to me. Just to be sure, I've run it through the readability statistics in Microsoft Word. The Flesch Reading Ease score was 94.3 out of 100 (with 100 being the easiest). The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score was 2.3 meaning a 2nd or 3rd grade student could understand it.

Anyway, reading the comments that I posted for Foolkiller - I replied to two of your statements at the top of my post. I didn't gloss over your comments, I acknowldeged them. If you read my comments again, you will see that the majority of them were in response to Foolkiller's comments.

 

[FoolKiller]

Thats a poor comparison - they were hardly 'rednecks'. I don't idly blame the government either. The 7/7 bombers left matyrdom videos in which they specifically blamed our government for the war in Iraq, and its failed foreign policy. There is growing evidence that our involvement in the 'war on terror' is radicalizing the Muslim youth of the UK.

<trimmed for space purposes>

I will avoid continuing the Iraq debate partially because some of what I said was due to a misunderstanding of what you were trying to say and partially because, as Famine pointed out, this is not the thread for that.

I made that comparision because you wouldn't have cases of descrimination and racism towards Muslims of Arab decent if not for the extremism. These cases aren't growing jut out of the blue. Every terrorist attack or attempted attack makes some people (generally less-informed) think that all Muslims hate America and western civilization and want to kill us. To me this seems to be the same as Muslims becoming radicalized because they see actions in the Middle East as America/Britain attempting to just kill all Muslims. Many people know that this is not the case, otherwise civilian casualties would be ten times higher.

So, if Muslims are becoming radicalized due to foreign policy that they don't exactly understand fully does that mean the foreign policy should be changed or maybe it just needs better PR? This is not a war on Islam or Arabs by any one group, but against radicalized groups who feel that the killing of innocent civilians is the only course of action.


This does bring up a question though. Why is the rate of radicalized Muslims in Britain growing so fast? I don't see this in America. I know many Muslims who immigrated from the Middle East and none of them have this radical attitude. Some disagree with the war and some think it is long overdue, but none of them think that it is a war on Islam or that America is a great evil that must be stopped at all costs. Not twenty feet from where I sit a co-worker is a woman from Iran who says that she wouldn't leave America for anything.

Is the difference between the US and Britain an actual geographical difference or maybe a media difference? What is creating this effect in Britain to such a degree but not as much in America, at least not visibly?

I'm not questioning the British system in anyway, but I am curious why the Muslim community in Britain is acting so much differently.

 

[Dave A]

I don't think we're picky enough about who we let into the country sometimes, just letting anyone and everyone in at times. Also there's some big, big Muslim communities in the UK, one near where I live in a place called Rusholm. But I've never met a muslim who harbours hate towards westerners.

 

[ledhed]

Muslims are being radicalised because they have access to Osama and his message along with all the other radical Islamic " leaders" Their brand of radical just happens to be a bit more proactive than ours..although if you grew up durring the Vietnam era you may be able to argue that we grew some fairly good radicals then also..they just never thought to bring the whole world under an Islamic umbrella ..they did not have the huge goals and global mindset as the Islamic types.

There is a huge pool of second generation Islamic youth lost in the west and the message of belonging to a cause and being able to identify with a group..even if its an internet group that meets , is a strong one. I am not suprised . Imagine if Goths belived in cannibaism ? How many times would that be in the news because a misguided group of morons decided to eat their teacher ? With Fava beans and onions of course .

This is as much a war of cultures as it is a war of terrorism..terrorism makes it easy to join the " fight ' ...no boot camp no drill instructors...no huge chain of command...just a decision to make something of yourself and go on to fame and glory.

Ummm DUH ??? Is thaat not how the Military recruits ? Fame glory and become something special , make something of yourself .

In their case its often a human bomb ...but hey you gotta believe in SOMETHING .

The best way to deal with it is to ; first lose the oil habit.
second , infitrate and destroy the home grown groups.
Third you MUST destroy the leadership and show no mercy..and make it public..something an Islamic radical really can appreciate.They already think we are a bunch of soft pussys that need just a little push before we all fall to the ground begging for mercy .

We need to change that perception . Thats going to be the hardest thing to do . The west just doesnt want to fight. Unless of course 10 airliners DO fall out of the sky ..French ones and other Europeans..then maybe we can unite against a common enemy.

Just stopping the attacks breeds the conspiracy assmunch types and the others that drink the peace Kool aid .

We are not at peace we are at war .

A bunch of people just do not know it yet .

 

[DLRgian]

Why an AK47?

Who the hell uses AK47s? Terrorists have more advanced weponry than the AK47 already!

And why the hell should pilots be armed? What makes pilots qualified marmksmen? If a single bullet goes through the fuselage of an aircraft the cabin is depressurised everyone inside dies, understand?

If anyone is armed on a plane they should be excellent marksmen and they should be armed with very precise and rather low power weapons, NOT AK47S!!!

K buddy before you strain yourself, there was sarcasm intended. And if you think a hole in the plane is going to kill ppl well so is a plane going into a building so you see the balance Sherlock?

 

[magburner]

I made that comparision because you wouldn't have cases of descrimination and racism towards Muslims of Arab decent if not for the extremism. These cases aren't growing jut out of the blue. Every terrorist attack or attempted attack makes some people (generally less-informed) think that all Muslims hate America and western civilization and want to kill us. To me this seems to be the same as Muslims becoming radicalized because they see actions in the Middle East as America/Britain attempting to just kill all Muslims. Many people know that this is not the case, otherwise civilian casualties would be ten times higher.

Using an analogy - heart attacks can kill instantly, cancer is slow and ravaging, but both can have the same net result. The fact that civillians are not being killed in greater numbers does not mean that the end result will not be the same. I also think you got the statement about muslims hating America and the UK the wrong way round. I think they feel that we hate them! Why else would they come to our countries, and kill our citizens? The growing radicalism of the Muslim youth will continue as long as we are seen to be trying to impose our ideas and values on their soveriegn nations.

So, if Muslims are becoming radicalized due to foreign policy that they don't exactly understand fully does that mean the foreign policy should be changed or maybe it just needs better PR? This is not a war on Islam or Arabs by any one group, but against radicalized groups who feel that the killing of innocent civilians is the only course of action.

Whats to understand? The foreign policy of America and the UK is cynical - its nothing more than an 'oil grab'. There are troubles in Africa just as pressing, but America and the UK seem to have no foreign policy towards that continent. I'm almost certain that if there was no oil in the Middle East, the problems there would be left to rot just as they have been in Africa.

This does bring up a question though. Why is the rate of radicalized Muslims in Britain growing so fast? I don't see this in America. I know many Muslims who immigrated from the Middle East and none of them have this radical attitude. Some disagree with the war and some think it is long overdue, but none of them think that it is a war on Islam or that America is a great evil that must be stopped at all costs. Not twenty feet from where I sit a co-worker is a woman from Iran who says that she wouldn't leave America for anything.

Is the difference between the US and Britain an actual geographical difference or maybe a media difference? What is creating this effect in Britain to such a degree but not as much in America, at least not visibly?

I'm not questioning the British system in anyway, but I am curious why the Muslim community in Britain is acting so much differently.

Some of it might be down to the fact that Muslims have very little say in the foregin policy of our country, they make up a sizeable proportion of the minority, but they feel thier views are not respected. Another reason is that since the 7/7 bombings, young Muslim youths have been singled-out almost exclusively by the police. Many complain that they are stopped and searched for no other reason other than they because they are young and Muslim. That kind of policy and the wars they see in their homelands can create the extremism.

Muslims are being radicalised because they have access to Osama and his message along with all the other radical Islamic " leaders" Their brand of radical just happens to be a bit more proactive than ours..although if you grew up durring the Vietnam era you may be able to argue that we grew some fairly good radicals then also..they just never thought to bring the whole world under an Islamic umbrella ..they did not have the huge goals and global mindset as the Islamic types.

Osama might be creating the fire, but we (Aemrica and the UK) are pouring the petrol on that fire. Why is it that everytime that Muslims resort to extrmeism, Osama is blamed? Why is it not our poilcies?

There is a huge pool of second generation Islamic youth lost in the west and the message of belonging to a cause and being able to identify with a group..even if its an internet group that meets , is a strong one. I am not suprised . Imagine if Goths belived in cannibaism ? How many times would that be in the news because a misguided group of morons decided to eat their teacher ? With Fava beans and onions of course .

I don't know about the Goths, but your right about the lost generation of Islamic youth in the west. We are isolating them, we are making turning them into extremists. Until we listen to them, the situation will get worse.

[qutoe=ledhed]This is as much a war of cultures as it is a war of terrorism..terrorism makes it easy to join the " fight ' ...no boot camp no drill instructors...no huge chain of command...just a decision to make something of yourself and go on to fame and glory.

Ummm DUH ??? Is thaat not how the Military recruits ? Fame glory and become something special , make something of yourself .

In their case its often a human bomb ...but hey you gotta believe in SOMETHING .[/quote]

Yeah, and Iraq and Afghanistan are their live-fire excercises!

The best way to deal with it is to ; first lose the oil habit.
second , infitrate and destroy the home grown groups.
Third you MUST destroy the leadership and show no mercy..and make it public..something an Islamic radical really can appreciate.They already think we are a bunch of soft pussys that need just a little push before we all fall to the ground begging for mercy .

Word up! I agree, our dependence on oil is the catalyst for our policies and the root cause of the problems in the Middle East. Yes we should aslo hunt and destroy the homegrown groups too, but that must come after reconcilliation. Save those that want to be, destroy the rest!

We are not at peace we are at war .

A bunch of people just do not know it yet .

Its a war I fear that we cannot hope to win...