who is responsible for the London attacks?

[laptop]

They fucked it up utterly in a sustained display of ludicrous incompetence fit to rival Elphinstone1, Custer, Raglan and Hitler in the annals of military stupidity.

1 The First Anglo-Afghan War

Footnotes on demand. I take it that educated readers are famliar with the others

 

[phildwyer]

Your people did this mears, you can't get away from that.

I don't think the US could have got away with it without British support. The British government is just as culpable as the US. And, while no "people" did this, a far higher proportion of the British electorate voted for Blair than Americans voted for Bush. I divide my time between these two countries, and I'm sure that Americans are more aware of, and concerned about, Iraq than Brits--at least until the recent bombing.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

In the long annals of military stupidity, I think this one is looking special. I think it's going to be viewed by scholars 100 years from now like the Great War or something. An example to the ages of how badly zealots can fuck up.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I don't think the US could have got away with it without British support. The British government is just as culpable as the US. And, while no "people" did this, a far higher proportion of the British electorate voted for Blair than Americans voted for Bush. I divide my time between these two countries, and I'm sure that Americans are more aware of, and concerned about, Iraq than Brits--at least until the recent bombing.

Sure but Blair's sin is that of the sneaking sidekick, supporting the neighbourhood bully by excusing his unpleasantness and deriving power from the association. The plan was always that of Dick Cheney, supported by Rumsfelt and the rest of the boys.

Blair just rode on their coat tails, he's just a quisling lickspittle to the big boys, however useful his support was to them in the early months of this.

 

[phildwyer]

Sure but Blair's sin is that of the sneaking sidekick, supporting the neighbourhood bully by excusing his unpleasantness and deriving power from the association. The plan was always that of Dick Cheney, supported by Rumsfelt and the rest of the boys.

Blair just rode on their coat tails, he's just a quisling lickspittle to the big boys, however useful his support was to them in the early months of this.

Which makes him even more despicable than Bush IMO. As to your opinion that the whole operation is a gigantic fuck-up, that presupposes that the aim was a healthy, viable and democratically self-governing Iraq. I think that the aim was a divided, devastated, impotent Iraq nominaly governed by a Quisling, and with D. Cheney in control of the oil fields. By which standard its been a triumphant success.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I thought that this piece in the NYT with Michael Ignatieff talking to Iranians was quite interesting in terms of the political choice that face people. It's got problems of course - as he is accused of by one Iranian, he doesn't go out onto the street and talk to people, he's talking to academics, students, intellectuals and so on. But it's still worth a read I think.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

In terms of their intentions perhaps, but standard of judgement to which I would suggest we hold our politicians is their service to our own interests.

By that standard they have failed miserably. They've created a festering source of terrorism, and as they can't get out for decades to come, it's going to be an ongoing festering source of terrorism. Like Chechnya, doing terror operations anyplace they can reach where they think it might have influence.

They talk to us of sacrifice, while sitting safe in their own security bubble, but sacrifice needs a cause that everyone believes in and confidence that the fight is winnable and the leaders competent. This shower are the least competent leaders imaginable and have made the problems they say they are solving orders of magnitude worse. We can't afford to leave them in charge.

 

[phildwyer]

In terms of their intentions perhaps, but standard of judgement to which I would suggest we hold our politicians is their service to our own interests.

By that standard they have failed miserably.

True. It is interesting to ask whose interests *have* been successfully served by this war. I submit that the primary beneficiary has been the state of Israel.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

True. It is interesting to ask whose interests *have* been successfully served by this war. I submit that the primary beneficiary has been the state of Israel.

I disagree, they probably thought it was a cool idea at first, but that plan only works if Iran is next. What has happened is that the US has run out of spunk in Iraq. They're bogged down and will be stuck there, stumbling around blindly smashing things for decades. Meanwhile Iran is laughing, because in almost any imaginable outcome of this, they win big.

 

[mears]

Have a look at this mears. http://www.comw.org/pda/0505rm10.html
US forces have no legitimacy with the vast majority of Iraqis, their current plan, the latest of several failed approaches is to train up Iraqis to take their place on the streets. All they've managed to do so far is create a few moderately efficient shiite death squads and some largely useless light forces with zero morale, shit equipment, less than three weeks training and the metaphorical equivalent of a big target on their back, half of whom are probably also working for the resistance. Electricity and water don't work two years after Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" and heavily armed criminal gangs roam at will while fanatical jihadi's mortar pilgrims and the whole of Anbar province looks about ready to move into stage two guerilla warfare.

Meanwhile our leaders cannot admit they have failed and seek to shift blame.

Iraq is fast turning into a much larger Chechnya. We can expect it to breed terrorism directly and to judge by reports of its role in the radicalisation of our recent bombers, it is already indirectly causing people to get killed here.

Your people did this mears, you can't get away from that. They fucked it up utterly in a sustained display of ludicrous incompetence fit to rival Elphinstone, Custer, Raglan and Hitler in the annals of military stupidity.

So you only want to talk about Iraq, of course. No invasion and Saddam is still in power. No invasion and the sanctions would still be in place. Saddam flaunting the incompetence of the United Nations. George Bush just like Neville Chamberlin.

The jihadists kill themselves beacuse they know whats at stake if some form of democracy happens in Iraq. That is why the blow up funeral processions and barbershops. All they can hope for is civil war in Iraq beacuse they have no alternative to demoracy. They have never provided a blue print to govern Iraq or anywhere else.

And beacuse of this they are doomed to fail.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

These days GW sounds like Lyndon B. Johnson circa 1967. He reeks of failure.

The jihadis, despite being 100% of what your appallingly incompetent leader talks about, are only 2-5% of the resistance. Most are sunni nationalists and they are well on their way to the second stage of a classical guerilla war.

The jihadis just piggy-back on that and use their safe areas. They are noisy but the real problem for the US right now is the sunni nationalist resistance.

This stupidity is making it more likely that the UK will be a major target of terrorism for no coherent benefit that any of the neo-cons can articulate.

 

[mears]

These days GW sounds like Lyndon B. Johnson circa 1967. He reeks of failure.

The jihadis, despite being 100% of what your appallingly incompetent leader talks about, are only 2-5% of the resistance. Most are sunni nationalists and they are well on their way to the second stage of a classical guerilla war.

The jihadis just piggy-back on that and use their safe areas. They are noisy but the real problem for the US right now is the sunni nationalist resistance.

This stupidity is making it more likely that the UK will be a major target of terrorism for no coherent benefit that any of the neo-cons can articulate.

I know, things were so good before the invasion. Invasions of Kuwait and Iran. Killing Kurds and draining marshes. It was a Islamic paradise that caused no problems in the region.

We are a long way from Vietnam and the 50,000 plus US deaths. There is no Ho Chi Min and no nice sounding ideology like communism to rally around.

Your numbers are guesses, no one no the exact make up of the insurgents. And no one knows if its Iraqi Sunnis blowing themselves up. But Sunni nationaists can still be coopted into a representative government. Either that or the country splits apart.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Detailed research has been done on all the relevant topics. I've linked some above, and on the other Iraq threads I recently started. The performance of the neo-cons has been disgraceful. When it come to utterly appalling military incompetence they are in the process of inventing their own new category.

 

[laptop]

London attack 'linked to Iraq'

Britain's involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed to the terrorist attacks in London, a respected independent thinktank on foreign affairs, the Chatham House organisation, says today.
...
In the most politically sensitive finding, Chatham House, which used to be known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, concludes that there is "no doubt" that the invasion of Iraq has "given a boost to the al-Qaida network" in "propaganda, recruitment and fundraising", while providing an ideal targeting and training area for terrorists.

"Riding pillion with a powerful ally has proved costly in terms of British and US military lives, Iraqi lives, military expenditure and the damage caused to the counter-terrorism campaign."
...
The authors are two academics, Frank Gregory from Southampton University and Paul Wilkinson, from St Andrews University.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1530818,00.html

Wilkinson has been, by European standards, a raving rightwing nutjob and staunch Atlantacist loyalist. And he's clearly furious. So this is a particularly painful report for the UK government.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Ouch. That kind of verdict from Chatham House is really quite serious. What that says is that the UK military have no confidence in the leadership of this war.

 

[laptop]

Ouch. That kind of verdict from Chatham House is really quite serious. What that says is that the UK military have no confidence in the leadership of this war.

Think I'll crosspost it to the "how the fuck do we get out..." thread

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Seriously though, if they are coming out with stuff like that, we can be fairly sure that the stuff we've heard informally is true. The UK chiefs of staff think they're being ordered around by howling maniacs and that they have absolutely no confidence in the US leadershiip in these rather serious matters.

 

[ska invita]

.

 

[bigfish]

London police avoid term 'suicide bombing'

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=8&u=/nm/20050716/ts_nm/security_britain_suicide_dc

LONDON (Reuters) - Police have not yet definitively established that four men who carried bombs on to London's transport network intended to die in last week's blasts, a Scotland Yard spokesman said on Saturday.

He was commenting on a report in the Daily Mirror newspaper suggesting the bombers, who all died in the July 7 explosions, may have thought they had time to get away after planting the devices.

Police have carefully refrained throughout the investigation from publicly using the term "suicide bomber," describing the four men only as bombing suspects.
...
The Daily Mirror report said several factors cast doubt on the suicide theory -- two of the men had pregnant wives, they did not carry the explosives strapped to their bodies, and they bought return rail tickets from Luton to London.

It quoted unnamed security sources as suggesting the bombers may have been duped into believing they could escape unscathed.

The 4 suspects from Beeston and Aylsbury may have also been duped into believing they were doing something like this.

Some recent Beeston history.

 

[Stibs]

I know, things were so good before the invasion. Invasions of Kuwait and Iran.

Wanna buy some anthrax?

A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defenses against the "human wave" attacks by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague.

The Iraqis continued to use chemical weapons against the Iranians until the end of the Iran-Iraq war. A U.S. air force intelligence officer, Rick Francona, reported finding widespread use of Iraqi nerve gas when he toured the Al Faw peninsula in southern Iraq in the summer of 1988, after its recapture by the Iraqi army. The battlefield was littered with atropine injectors used by panicky Iranian troops as an antidote against Iraqi nerve gas attacks.

Far from declining, the supply of U.S. military intelligence to Iraq actually expanded in 1988, according to a 1999 book by Francona, "Ally to Adversary: an Eyewitness Account of Iraq's Fall from Grace." Informed sources said much of the battlefield intelligence was channeled to the Iraqis by the CIA office in Baghdad.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Rev Green in london with the explosives?

 

[newharper]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4691615.stm

"Iran-Iraq talks heal old wounds "

"After decades of no diplomatic relations, Iraq now has a prime minister who has spent years in exile in Iran and heads a Shia-dominated government sympathetic to its neighbour, she says. "

While this may give some credibility to the Shiite Iraqi Gov't with Shias, it can only reinforce the Sunni uprising and is a disaster for US foreign policy.

So are they operating without US permission?

 

[phildwyer]

I disagree, they probably thought it was a cool idea at first, but that plan only works if Iran is next. What has happened is that the US has run out of spunk in Iraq. They're bogged down and will be stuck there, stumbling around blindly smashing things for decades. Meanwhile Iran is laughing, because in almost any imaginable outcome of this, they win big.

Well, I can easily imagine an outcome in which Iran is flattened by the US Air Force, operating from Iraq and Afghanistan. They don't have to invade Iran to eliminate it as a threat to Israel. I don't think the Iranians are laughing, they're surrounded...

 

[bigfish]

Who are the British authorities trying to protect?

No Islamic will or video celebrating suicide, no public celebration of the 'martyrs', unsatisfactory assumption of responsibility, overly large rucksacks, happy-go-lucky bombers with no concerns about being videotaped together or leaving behind identification that would lead back to the 'cell' which supposedly had plans for future attacks, uncharacteristic candidates for suicide bombers - it all adds up to one thing. Someone tricked the four into believing they were drug mules. Once we accept that fact, we have to accept that there is absolutely no reason to believe the Official Story that this violence was connected to Islamic terrorism. It could have been set up by anybody, including the intelligence organization of any country. Of course, the fact that four Muslim men were chosen as the patsies gives us a clue as to who might have been involved.

Unfortunately, British authorities seem to be in on the cover-up. The peculiar transformation of the original certainty that the bombs used were military plastic explosives - and this would be a certainty as their analysis would be based on chemical residues - to the theory that they were a home-made mix in the Egyptian patsy's bathtub, indicates that the British investigation has become completely corrupted. Military explosives were in the rucksacks, but since the investigators couldn't tie military explosives to the four bombers they had to attempt to frame the Egyptian by claiming he made the explosives in his bathtub. Now that the frame-up of the Egyptian has fallen apart, the whole cover-up has also fallen apart. Who are the British authorities trying to protect?

xymphora

 

[kyser_soze]

Here we go...it's all the doing of MI6 because it's going to cower the British public into accepting hundreds of new oppressive laws and the introduction of a police state and PNAC...

FFS there is not a SINGLE shred of evidence to back up any of the suppositions in this.

Oh yeah, BF - got a challenge for you re: 9/11...

IF the towers were in fact taken out by controlled demonlition, and it's visible what floors were blown, has anyone looked at the maintainance records for the floors concerned and checked for any suspisciously large refits or work when they could have been planted, and following on from that, the names of companies invovled and then have THEM traced back to find out if they are front companies.

Get hard evidence like that and you'll actually have uncovered something as opposed to the bullishit speculaiton of looking at grainy mpeg footage on the internet.

Sorry for the thread derail BTW...as you were...

 

[fela fan]

As for producing hard evidence, that's surely the job of journalists and reporters, not of urbanites on political debating boards kyser.

If something sounds plausible, then i feel it the duty of journos to get on the case. They have somewhat more resources than bigfish in his role on urban.

And when i see that reuters report telling us about the mirror reporting the background of these bombers, then this story, at the minimum, sounds plausible.

On the other hand, maybe it's just a conspiracy, but if it's plausible, it should be investigated. Particularly when we know of plenty of precedents for criminal behaviour by agents of the state.

 

[editor]

xymphora

Ah, another little blog linking to prisonplanet and the truthseeker (starring columnist Joe Vialls).

Filed accordingly.

 

[kyser_soze]

As for producing hard evidence, that's surely the job of journalists and reporters, not of urbanites on political debating boards kyser.

If something sounds plausible, then i feel it the duty of journos to get on the case. They have somewhat more resources than bigfish in his role on urban.

And when i see that reuters report telling us about the mirror reporting the background of these bombers, then this story, at the minimum, sounds plausible.

On the other hand, maybe it's just a conspiracy, but if it's plausible, it should be investigated. Particularly when we know of plenty of precedents for criminal behaviour by agents of the state.

If I were you I'd be more concerned about Shinawatra being given 'Emergency powers' that include direct control of the Army and security services in your adopted nation than pissant efforts at building an MI6 conspiracy out of the London stuff mate. Like 'When's the next plane out of here'

Someone tricked the four into believing they were drug mules.

Yeah, cos that's not going to make you paranoid is it?

'No no, you haven't got a bomb it's just 3kg of smack instead'

 

[Jazzz]

Why would they think it was a bomb if they thought it was drugs, and had already done a run or two?

That's the only thing I can find to explain, if you reject the idea that they were willing to commit suicide for no reason, that the bus bomber didn't ditch his rucksack and run as fast as he could.

 

[kyser_soze]

Why would they think it was a bomb if they thought it was drugs, and had already done a run or two?

That's the only thing I can find to explain, if you reject the idea that they were willing to commit suicide for no reason, that the bus bomber didn't ditch his rucksack and run as fast as he could.

1. They were commiting suicide for a reason.

2. See answer 1. They were killing themselves for a cause.