Yesterday Brian Ross of ABC reported:
Large teams of newly trained suicide bombers are being sent to the United States and Europe, according to evidence contained on a new videotape obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com.
U.S. intelligence officials said the video was part of “an aggressive and sophisticated propaganda campaign” that shouldn’t frighten us. Instead, we are supposed to be frightened by damnfools with grandiose but unworkable plans to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. Actually, if U.S. intelligence officials are telling us not to worry, maybe we should worry. Brian Ross continues,
“It doesn’t take too many who are willing to actually do it and be able to slip through the net and get into the United States or England and cause a lot of damage,” said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism official.
The possibility of suicide bombers has been at the back of my mind since 9/11. First, because New York (where my children and I live) is the first place they’ll come to. And second, because as much as the nation went off the deep end after 9/11, I don’t even want to think of the insanity that will arise if suicide bombers start detonating themselves in random locations. (Of course, if the suicide bombers concentrate on New York City, the righties will blame us New Yorkers somehow.)
And I know you’re all thinking what I’m thinking — so much for “fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here.”
Anyway, the alarm brought a quick and decisive response from crack rightie idiocy squads. For example, La Boobala of Atlas Shrugs wrote,
Watch the dhimmicrats blame Bush. “He created the jihadis!” They love anyone or anything that hates America.
Love immigration or hate immigration, you must enforce the borders and get a grip already on who is here and why. This aint no Mudd club, no CBGB, this aint no foolin around. …
… After all, anyone could come over our southern border and then be home free.
Another rightie, Gina Cobb, writes,
By the way, how do you feel about border security now?
I should explain that righties live in an alternative universe in which “evil libruhls” and “dhimmicrats” rule America and are against border security. In our common reality, of course, both parties are all in favor of border security but differ on how it can be accomplished.
Allahpundit finds it remarkable that one man in the video — allegedly the leader of the group bound for Britain — spoke English. Apparently no one outside an English-speaking country ever learns English unless they are up to no good.
Jeff G. writes at Protein Wisdom:
And by “U.S. intelligence officials,†Ross presumably means those same folks who believed 911 would never happen, that Islamic terrorism was a phantom threat (cough cough Larry Johnson cough), and who, in a show of political gamesmanship, sent lazy gadfly and CIA house husband Joe Wilson off to uncover the “truth†about Saddam’s nuclear ambitions and connections to terror states.
No, Jeff. The people who thought 9/11 would never happen and who didn’t take Islamic terrorism seriously were “White House officials.” Intelligence officials were the ones desperately trying to get George and Condi and Rummy to haul their heads out of their asses and pay attention to the threat before 9/11.
I have no idea what “cough cough Larry Johnson cough” refers to. I assume that somewhere the righties found an old quote from Larry Johnson saying that Islamic terrorism was a phantom threat, but I googled for this and couldn’t find it. If anyone can interpret this for me I’d be grateful. And it looks like some people still won’t admit that Joe Wilson reported the truth.
Remarkably, Little Lulu — she who waxes hysterical over every phony “plot” the Bush Administration announces — has been silent on this one. Word may have come down from on high to downplay suicide bombers. This worries me.
The most bizarre thing about the past few years for me has been that I don’t trust the WH at all on anything. I heartily disliked Nixon and Reagan and saw them do quite a few wretched things, but I never had this level of mistrust for the executive branch. You’re right — if they say it’s a problem the smart bet is that it’s not a threat, and if they say it’s not a threat the smart bet is that is it is one. It’s a crazy world.
There are at least two sad things about this (I’ll limit myself to only two, but truly the pickings are depressingly abundant).
1) If’n’when a suicide bomb goes off in the US, “fighting them over there so they don’t come here” will be as utterly forgotten as the warning to Bush entitled “Bin Laden Planning to Attack US Using HiJacked Airliners”.
2) The more mayhem and bloodshed that goes on overseas, whether by our hand or by the hands of others, the more likely there will be suicide bombings here in the US, what the CIA calls “blowback”. I’m actually surprised it hasn’t happened yet. And – most importantly – the more this will galvanize righties into their particular form of self-righteous hyper-patriotism. You think they screech now? You ain’t seen nuthin yet.
In a sense the righties’ obsession with global jihad is a self-fulfilling prophecy, one that saner heads must somehow interdict before they become completely unreasonable, which is what will happen if’n’when suicide bombers become successful in unleashing their terror on US soil.
You’re right, moonbat, and this is why several times over the past couple years we’ve heard prominent Republicans and pundits openly wish for a terrorist attack on US soil.
There can’t possibly be anything to worry about here. We destroyed the Taliban and, through maintaining our efforts at transformative aid and reconstruction in Afghanistan, prevented it from ever again serving as a training base for suicide terrorists. Didn’t we?
Oh. Yeah. Right.
They “forgot” to finish the job.
Honestly, though, the fact that there are terrorists training to attack the West with suicide squads isn’t really new, despite Brian Ross getting juicy video. It does, however, remind us of how very pathetic the administration has been, and how deranged its supporters remain.
It’s a sad day when I find myself reassured more by Brian Ross’ history of occasional sensationalism than by my government’s competence in protecting me.
When it comes to terrorist threat warnings issued by our government..it’s in one ear and out the other for me..They’ve pissed away their cedibility ..it’s sad to say, but they’ve made a mockery of legitimate terrorist threats. Every time I hear of one, I think of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza trembling in fear at the sound of the wind rustling through the trees.
If it reflects badly upon Our Dear Leader then it just can’t be true
I mean, I do hate to break the news to you, but Larry Johnson, CIA superspy, wrote something really stupid about the terrorist threat being overblown on July 10, 2001. I mean, it’s in print, guys.
And actually, few conservatives bother to respect the CIA anymore. Capable of leaking information to the New York Times, but not so much for killing bin Laden. Yah, “hair on fire” about terrorism and all that. Manifest, fatuous, bullshit. The CIA was responsible for tracking and shutting down Al Qaeda. In reality, the CIA was and remains and organization that couldn’t put the hearse in the right place in a two car funeral and produces buck-passers like George Tenet. And of course, CIA Superspy Larry Johnson.
Ask yourself why and how AQ Khan successfully traded in nuclear components and uranium hexafloride for up to a decade right under the notion of the good folks over at the Non-Proliferation division (that would be Val’s Division, Our Heroine).
For its part, Al Qaeda was a faster, better, and far more compartmentalized organization than the late 20th Century model CIA ever thought of being. It’s franchise model was more than capable of counteracting anything thrown at it by the blundering, post-cold war model thrown together at the end of the Second World War. I mean, these jackalopes screwed up the Bay of Pigs.
Larry Johnson, CIA superspy, wrote something really stupid about the terrorist threat being overblown on July 10, 2001. I mean, it’s in print, guys.
I inferred that Jeff G. was referring to something like that, and I don’t deny it could be true, but a link would have been nice. Righties generally have less credibility than the CIA, even.
In the rest of your comment you display some pretty flabby thinking. Yes, the CIA and intelligence agencies generally were not exactly models of efficiency before 9/11. However, the fact remains that throughout 2001, from before the January inauguration and until 9/11 itself, a number of intelligence officials went out of their way to warn the Bushies to pay attention to the threat of Islamic terrorism, and the Bushies brushed them off. This happened multiple times. The U.S. intelligence community knew SOMETHING big was in the works, but they couldn’t get the White House to take these warnings seriously until 9/11. The Bush national security “experts” — Condi Rice looms large in this saga, but so does Dick Cheney — didn’t take al Qaeda seriously because it was not a “state sponsored” organization.
So when you refer to “those same folks who believed 911 would never happen,” in reality that would be the George W. Bush Administration.
The Larry Johnson reference refers to an op-ed in which Larry wrote something along the lines of:
a) The Islamic terrorism threat is diminishing;
b) The only remaining Islamic terrorism threat is from Osama bin Ladin;
c) Osama bin Ladin is capable of attacking the USA; therefore
d) The USA should concentrate on Osama bin Ladin specifically, rather than Islamic terrorism generally.
So yeah, he got it right, section9.