Mmm, not sure about the lots of little attacks.

The model will probably remain the Madrid bombing. 99% local : local team, local design, local leader, just a bit of financial help to prime the project and technical expertise, some "moral guidance" and a big carnage at the end.

Bin Laden's focus on airplanes is bizarre. Too much protection, too much attention from intelligence agencies and unless you crash the plane in a skyscraper, the carnage is "restricted" to the passengers. 9/11 was an enormous shock because of the Towers, not of the planes.

I agree with Fifi. Had a plane blown up in the air as a result of a bomb in 2001, it would have been horrible, but not in the same league as watching two massive buildings crumble. Truly, Bin Laden's focus on airplanes is bizarre.

I hope bin Laden realizes the futility of trying to wage terror against the West. He can do much better for the world by providing micro loans to poor folks in the middle east and help themselves to better opportunities. Micro terrorism and terrorism on large scale aren't going to help his causes, whatever they are. Same message to Western politicians who insist on using their big ass weapons against little babies and helpless women trying to eke out a living in a world that is already tough, even without smart bombs falling out of the sky.

This post is weird. The Brits apparently used the situaion to unveil other contacts and struck when the time was right. I mean, your conclusion might be correct, but isn't the larger issue about how our intelligence agencies manage their resources and maneuvers?

We (the US) pick up crazies with plans written on napkins and claim a major victory. The UK (if this pans out), watches them, gets info, and then moves in when it is necessary.

Someone is taking terrorism in its nation seriously, and someone is not. We aren't, the UK is. We might be members of the Coalition of the Willing, but it is painfully obvious that police work, not invasions is what is going to provide the best safety against terrorist attacks. People who don't realize this just have hard-ons for use of military force.

I'm honestly just glad these terrorists were caught before they could do anything. While I'm definitely interested to know more details about what actually went down, I don't think there's any denying that something horrible was probably prevented.

I wonder: what lesson will al-Qaeda draw from this?

I think Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden has learned Bush's use of the terrorist survelliance program has foiled their attempt to attack America again. I think Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden has learned that even after Ned Lamont won the Democratic primary, Bush and the Republican Party have not been lulled into a false sense of complacency about the threats of Al-Qaeda/Hezbollah type of terrorism. I think Al-Qaeda will learn in the November 2006 elections that the American people have been reawakened to the threat of terrorism by voting Bush and the Republican party back in to power while voting out the Ned Lamont Democrats who wish to weaken our resolve in the War on Terrorism.

I'd expect AQ to keep trying big splashy efforts to keep building their 'brand'. But maybe on 'off-broadway' countries like Italy, Austria, India or Thailand.

Bin Laden's been dead for years - my guess. These guys may have no relation to al Qaeda, in as much as it exists anymore. Lots of independent groups have an incentive to say they're affiliated with aQ, and politicians/intelligence types also have an incentive to let that perception remain. (see al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, supposedly Zarqawi's group's website, in actuality might have been Baath-party remnants, while the site was either run by the CIA or allowed to persist by us)....

To say nothing of the incentives of the cottage industry of "terrorism experts" and our pathetic media (who's never seen a threat it couldn't hype).

And the comment from the article "Details started to emerge, and it became clear over the last couple weeks the nature of the threat and the individuals," might be somewhat at odds with the notion that the surveillence was comprehensive for over a year.

Yes, Bin Laden's focus on airplanes IS bizarre. Kinda makes you wonder just who's focus it is.

Anyway, seems clear to me the answer to your question, Kevin, of whether the future in store for us is one filled with little or big attacks, is ... both.

If this turns out to actually be an AQ project, the key issue should be: Why are the top two leaders still alive, still free.

Everytime some nut job Repug, especially shotgun Dick, spouts off about Democrats being soft on terra, the nation needs to be reminded who chose to fail to decapitate the AQ leaders. It needs to be a bumper sticker mantra as "tax and spend liberals" was during the 1980s and 1990s.

Bush screwed up so Ben Laden is still out there inspiring, if not actually leading, our mortal enemies. What a tragedy.

Hats off to Cynical Joe, who has nailed the reason for the big attacks -- they create lasting publicity and "build the Al Qaeda brand" in a way that isolated pinprick attacks could never accomplish.

The also anger the West more, leading us a bit closer to the Day of Reckoning which Al Qaeda's leaders foolishly imagine they want.

They knew of a possibility of a major terrorist attack aince a year, but nobody came up with the idea that liquid vomvs might be a danger? Apparently, US airports are totally unprepared for this kind of danger. Who is to blame for this, the Dems? Who is running DHS? Who has been sfortfunding thge budget for domestic anti-terror measures? Where did the money needed for better homeland security go? Who prevented bills for enhanced funding for anti-terrorist measures from becoming law? Who has a record of ignoring inteligence reports and warnings?
Don't let the GOP get away with their spin!

Bin Laden has to be laughing that we are so politically insecure it seems we need to promote these arrests, in the media, at key moments, rather than keep quiet about them and maximally leverage the situation, mainly because our democracy is currently led by an insecure and cynical demogoguery that bases its entire survival on being "tough on terrorism", even as it never actually devotes full resources to bringing Mr. Bin Laden to justice.

We'll see if this preserves Blair for another few months. I expect this kind of action from our leaders, and I don't consider it extraordinary. The real question is what it took to uncover a plot like this before it occurred, in terms of what concessions of liberty to the police state, and whether that risk calculus is really worth it, or if they're exaggerating the impact of a few more airplanes blown up in mid-air.

AlQaeda's is a persistant bunch of homicidial jihadis. They failed in 1995 with Project Bojinka so they were revisiting the idea. Just like the WTC. They also attempt to attack the form of transportation that will cause the most alarm and economic damage. In the US that is air travel, while in London it is the Tube and in Madrid the commuter rail system.
Since the government has known about liquid explosives for almost 11 years, I am stunned that TSA didn't already have a plan in place. I guess that is what you get when DHS issues contracts based on cronyism and corruption and Indiana has the most "potential terrorism targets" in the country.

Richard Clarke wrote a piece for the Atlantic Monthly titled "Ten Years Later" in January 2005. In it he envisions attacks on Las Vegas casinos, amusement parks, urban trasportation systems, shopping malls, and all manner of cyber attacks.
Some of the attacks will be highly sophisticated and coordinated while others will be individuals blowing themselves up in a Gap the day after Thanksgiving. My only comfort is how well Chertoff handled Hurricane Katrina and firms like MZM are helping to secure our nation.

No, I think there will be one big nuclear blast soon - since the Bushies have done nothing to contain nuclear proliferation and the spread of nuclear material.

American Hiroshima. Count on it.

Once you push a boulder down the hill, you don't have to keep pushing it. Further attacks on the US are pointless.

Al-Qaeda doesn't have to do a damn thing anymore; America is doing the heavy lifting from here on out, and al-Qaeda's stated goals aren't too far from being achieved. No wonder Bin Landen worked so hard for Bush to be elected.

I don't know how they come up with this stuff. Drinks. Sports drinks for sakes. Say good bye to the days of cheap car insurance quote when they start doing the cars. Man, the days of cheap car insurance qutoe maybe over. And along with it safe travel.

Sadly, I think OBL is smart enough to know that now, Kevin...and won't be surprised if while the Brits and the Americans, along with the MSM, have their eyes on one of these BIG STORIES somewhere smaller (or single) terrorists operations are carried out. Still you watch the Matthews, Russerts, et al spin right back around to kissing Bush's feet and playing GOOD BOYS for the Repugs as the election nears. WE MUST BE SAFE!!! I find it ridiculous that the only person I heard mention the shoddy checking for on air baggage/cargo was LOU DOBBS! How long before these guys figure out a way to have whatever they're making stored away safely in checked cargo?

Al Qaeda won't learn anything. Either they will be put out of business by being killed or captured, or they will try again.

Having 50 people arrested is no big deal when there are plenty of others in the wings.

This is an example of effective police work, and not the foolish applicaion of military force. Can John Kerry expect an apology soon?

Al-Qaeda must know that fear, terrorism, and talk of terrorism positively influences American elections in favor of Republicans. Why is it to the terrorist's advantage to see Republicans elected?

AQ presumably already knew that the American election calendar controls counterterrorism.

Next terrorist moves are pretty obvious:
1. Airplanes -- bomb in cargo hold.
2. Oil at $75.00 per barrel -- bomb major oil infrastructure and send price to well over $100 per barrel.

Actually, this shows more than anything that the "war on terrorism" is more of a criminal investigation matter rather than a military action. If we dedicated a quarter of the resources being poured down the shitter in Iraq to this type of activity, we'd be far more effective while not squandering the lives and resources of our armed forces.

Actually all AQ has to do is spread rumors and set up dupes to talk about plots....the economic disruptions to the airline and oil industries will hit Americans where it really bothers them..in their pocketbook. Eventually the public will figure out the futility of dealing with ants by using a shotgun....we can never kill all of this generation of terrorists, but we may be able to prevent the next generation by being a lot smarter than we are being now.

The AQ model is the big terrorist attack. So expect big terrorist attacks committed by a few people - I guess that means WMD.

I wonder: what lesson will al-Qaeda draw from this? Osama bin Laden may be a religious fanatic, but he's not stupid, and my guess is that he'll conclude that in a post-9/11 security environment it's simply impossible to keep a plot this big a secret. There are too many entry points and too many ways for a single mistake to derail the whole thing.

I thought the word on al-Qaeda was that we had degraded their infrastructure and that, while OBL might be giving general inspiration, more local organizations were almost certainly doing the planning in a decentralized way. So what OBL learns about operational planning is probably irrelevant.

Anyhow, terrorism doesn't seek to kill as an end goal; it does it as a means of spreading fear and provoking responses.

If the can spread the same fear and provoke the same kinds of responses without killing anyone, or being killed themselves, its still a win; plus, if the responses are predictable enough with enough of the same kinds of scares, they become exploitable themselves.

Yes, they are not going to be able to match the 9/11 attacks in terms of numbers killed or the degree of spectacle. I suspect the reason they wanted to attack 10 planes instead of one or two was because they want to get the number killed into the thousands.

But an operation this big has serious difficulties maintaining operational security. Apparently, there weren't that many people who knew what was going down on 9/11. The muscle, it's been reported, did not know what the plan was.

Short of a nuke, we've seen their worst. And law enforcement will not ignore information the way they before 9/11.

I agree with Fifi. Had a plane blown up in the air as a result of a bomb in 2001, it would have been horrible, but not in the same league as watching two massive buildings crumble. Truly, Bin Laden's focus on airplanes is bizarre.

Yeah, that's why they had to hit ten planes. But that's a big complicated operation to keep secret from people surveilling you and your friends. There was one report that money was wired from Pakistan. Don't they read the NYTimes?

Someone is taking terrorism in its nation seriously, and someone is not. We aren't, the UK is. We might be members of the Coalition of the Willing, but it is painfully obvious that police work, not invasions is what is going to provide the best safety against terrorist attacks. People who don't realize this just have hard-ons for use of military force.

The UK security services have had thirty plus years hard experience in Northern Ireland to figure out what does and does not work in dismantling a terrorist network. One of their most effective weapons against the IRA was riddling that organization with a network of informers, infiltrating it so thoroughly that they came to know most every step the IRA was taking before the IRA did -- in short, painstaking intellingence, not brute force, won the day. The British have been able to learn from experience -- we, on the other hand, haven't.

Al's pledge of allegiance aside, I would like to know how much of this information was obtained thru Bush's illegal spying program.

(Al, OBL and the boys learned long ago that Bush has little interest in them. They were simply a convenient decoy towards the invasion of Iraq.)

This evolution of offense/defense mechanisms will continue far into the future. What is truly amazing is that our latest defense mechanism was so late in coming after the liquid bomb scheme was uncovered back in the mid 90s.

It really is time that we took a close look at the vulnerability of our cargo holds on passenger jet aircraft.

What we really need to examine is just exactly why our world view is clashing so much with the Islamic extremist world view. Is it really that they hate us for our freedoms as Bush cites endlessly? Is there no means of talking with these people? And why is even the thought of talking labeled appeasement and "hate America first"?

Al-Qaeda must know that fear, terrorism, and talk of terrorism positively influences American elections in favor of Republicans. Why is it to the terrorist's advantage to see Republicans elected?

Because the Republicans give Al Qaeda what it needs -- an atmosphere of fear in which to flourish. At this point the GOP and Al Qaeda may as well be working hand in glove.

The British have been able to learn from experience -- we, on the other hand, haven't.

Because the Bush Administration not only rejects all advice that is 'not invented here' but it would prefer to have people looking at its ineptly managed 'war on terror' than its much more successful war on middle-class and poor Americans.

It really is time that we took a close look at the vulnerability of our cargo holds on passenger jet aircraft.

If they want to bring down planes, they hardly need to smuggle bombs aboard -- they can hit those slow-moving big commercial airlines with a shoulder-fired missile right upon take-off or landing.

Bin Laden's focus on airplanes is bizarre. Too much protection, too much attention from intelligence agencies and unless you crash the plane in a skyscraper, the carnage is "restricted" to the passengers. 9/11 was an enormous shock because of the Towers, not of the planes.

The interesting thing about this is it seems like almost the exact plan that was disrupted a couple years before 9/11 targetting, IIRC, a bunch of airplanes out of the Phillipines and widely reported. Do a bunch of near simultaneous hijackings, and blow the planes up in flight.

Are al-Qaeda's planners out of new ideas and retrying old failures, or are largely independent less-professional sympathetic groups drawing inspiration from widely published information?

I doubt it Kevin.

Anyone who wants to commit mass murder in the U.S. can easily do it. All they have to do is take those chemicals onto a crowded subway or have a small group of lunatics attack a city downtown area with automatic weapons.

I was evacuated from the WTC plaza on 9/11 (had to have glass and cement shards removed from my head, neck, arms, and shoulders), and this morning I was coming out of the subway and heard an enormous explosion that almost made me jump out of my pumps. I was shaking for quite a while afterward. (Turned out to be part of the demolition/construction they're doing down near Whitehall Street in lower Manhattan.)

If al Qaida's mission (and frankly, that of the Bush administration and other Repugs) is to scare the bejeezus out of us, well, this morning, for me at least, it truly was Mission Accomplished.

Back to Kevin';s point: I agree with Kevin that it doesn't make "sense" (if you can use that term about fanatical terrorists) that they haven't targeted smaller operations, say, a state fair here or a carnival there, just to a) give the entire country the willies and b) not run the risk of huge operations with lots of possibilities for discover/infiltration.

I think it's because they are basically completely ego driven little turds, who want to make a big splash in history and be glorified as martyrs--which probably would seem tougher to do if you blew up a petting zoo in Tennessee than if you blew up a way-tall building in the financial center.

sullijan,

Small operations, as effective as they may be towards establishing general terror, wouldn't draw recruits. The nuance of such a strategy wouldn't grab either their attention or imagination.

Al Qaeda is a PR movement as much as it is a terrorism force.

hope bin Laden realizes the futility of trying to wage terror against the West. He can do much better for the world by providing micro loans to poor folks in the middle east

First, he may not want to do better for the world.

Second, if the game were turned into who could do the most good, and we were not so stupid that we declined to compete, we could totally win. The US has enormous resources, if only we would choose to use them for actual good, instead of blowing up "evildoers".

If the knowledge was so widespread and the operation so clearly never going to get off the ground, wtf is with the overreaction of the DHS types???

Clearly done for political gain. My 84 yr old mother is in great fear about how she can fly to visit my sister in a month because of the senseless baggage restrictions.

When we let the MSM broadcast this web of fear and let it control us, the terrorist do win.

Al Qaeda is a PR movement as much as it is a terrorism force.

Terrorism is PR by other means.

bt's comment at 3:35 is the most sensible comment. If the world leaders were as intelligent, and only half as compassionate as this comment, we would not be worrying about terrorists.

wish1wuz2,

That was the point I made: that smaller operations would wreak more widespread terror, but wouldn't provide the ego gratification and glory of larger ones.

On another point, the media, I was not surprised that each station already had a catchy logo and music for the threat by the time I got home from work.

'Hats off to Cynical Joe, who has nailed the reason for the big attacks -- they create lasting publicity and "build the Al Qaeda brand" in a way that isolated pinprick attacks could never accomplish. '

Of course they have to make the big attacks to build the AQ brand, otherwise they'll look like one-hit wonders. They want to be like U2, not A Flock of Seagulls. If they only hit one plane, the militant foreheads-on-carpets headbangers would think AQ was in their Fat Elvis stage, and would see other groups as being the gruuvvier jihadis.

"If the knowledge was so widespread and the operation so clearly never going to get off the ground, wtf is with the overreaction of the DHS types???"

Because they had to mirror what was being done Europe, people, and a sudden clampdown in security in US flights would need an explanation.

Come on, do you really believe this guy holed up in the mountains could be involved in the detailed planning of such a major operation? He's just a bogeyman. Somebody else has to be the financier and planner for what is essentially a major covert operation against the full power of the British intelligence network. The "Al Quaeda" link is tenuous at best, but the terrorist nature of the plan is very clear. So what is at the root of this operation?

Bin Laden's focus on aircraft is perfectly logical.

Terrorism is a PR stunt. It is designed to evoke fear. How would your typical business traveller feel if he or she had to wait in a 3 hour line, and planes were STILL getting blown up?

It is also designed to strike at the heart of the US economy. Some of our greatest, but most fragile industries, the airlines, and plane manufacture, suffer greatly when they get hit. The US was forced to bail out the majors to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in the wake of 9/11 - and the bastards went bankrupt and weaseled out of their employee pension plans anyway. Worse still, all of America's major corporations rely heavily on the airline industry for day-to-day operations: sales and support visits, wheeler-dealers, etc. This activity was paralyzed after 9/11 for over a week, and activity had to ramp up slowly afterwards. I know that my company suffered; even lost a major contract due to not being able to put an engineer on-site when the customer needed us. They went with a local provider.

This impact, coupled with our dependency on foreign oil, and the market's reaction to conflict in the middle east, or any upheavals related to the middle east, is designed to strike at our economic might.

And it's working, isn't it? Slowly but surely, oil prices are near $80/bbl, where they were $20/bbl in 1999. Our economy isn't performing nearly as well as it could be. We're forced to borrow vast sums to fund our defense.

I think aircraft are the obvious and ideal target for the sort of war that bin Laden is waging on the West.

What I don't get is why it takes so many operatives to accomplish this task, and why they are dumb enough to use communication channels that they KNOW will get them caught. There's the theory that bin Laden is happy that the US has decided to trash the 4th Amendment to fight him. I'm not sure I buy that, maybe it causes him amusement. But I suspect that these operations are probably pretty easy to accomplish, and bin Laden's ego has gotten in the way of using methods that would guarantee success. Either that, or they're all just stupid, and got really, really lucky on 9/11.

The WTC as a target, on the other hand, was symbolic, and was about ego. They were the tallest buildings in the world - they were about economic might. They were about the West being proud of it's accomplishments. They were about the West saying "nyah-nyah" to the East. Remember the whole debate about whether the Petronas Towers were technically the tallest buildings in the world - ornamental spires, occupied floors, observation decks - etc. -?
Well, as the East knocks em down, the West loses it's symbols of economic might. I find it incredibly ironic that we were not able to rebuild. What an incredible hard-on that must give bin Laden.

We should have killed that motherfucker when we had the chance. Bush and the war-profiteering neocons blew it.

What? MI5 didn't discover this plot 3 days ago? Someone tell Chris Matthews and the othe chattering clowns. Watching cable news yesterday I came away the impression we were saved in the nick of time, a few minutes more and the plot would have succeeded.

Above, terrorism is largely a PR mission and sadly our media and this President play right into it by glorifying the potential damage and enhancing the fear caused by such acts.

The lesson bin Laden will take from yesterday's hysteria is just having a plot exposed makes Westerners act like frightened little girls who will obey all security directives of their authoritarian governments. There is no need to actually blow up airplanes, the fear Westerners have been trained to experience will disrupt society enough to be considered a victory for al Queda. The puppet master just has to twitch a finger and people will dump their belongings into government containers and stand in line for hours for no good reason.

A month ago we had an incident here in Texas City, TX.....FBI, Bomb Squad, Police....... It was a huge deal and something new for us who live around these petrochemical meccas!

I feel sure the FBI suspected foul play since they knew about this threat being monitored overseas in Great Britain. But here in Texas we learned about peroxide based explosives..............

TATP, the terrorists' explosive of choice
here

The recipe for this brew is not a secret.....

Al-Qaeda must know that fear, terrorism, and talk of terrorism positively influences American elections in favor of Republicans. Why is it to the terrorist's advantage to see Republicans elected?
Posted by: David Emen on August 11, 2006 at 8:15 AM | PERMALINK

Republicans=high oil prices=$$$ for terror operations.

Republicans=war profiteering and corrutption=a militarily weaker America.

Next terrorist moves are pretty obvious:
1. Airplanes -- bomb in cargo hold.
2. Oil at $75.00 per barrel -- bomb major oil infrastructure and send price to well over $100 per barrel.
Posted by: lou on August 11, 2006 at 8:54 AM | PERMALINK

No. If they were going to attack oil Infrastructure in the US, they would already have done so. They've had 5+ years. Although, there have been an unusually large number of explosions and fires and other assorted accidents at US oil refineries and storage plants in the last 5 years (particularly in Texas) - you know damn well that if Al Qaeda were responsible, they'd be informing the press, who would gleefully tell us, because that would make their oil futures contracts go up.

As terrified as I am of a world of $100/bbl oil, I don't think that's Al Qaeda's goal. It's the goal of the domestic terrorists.

Though I think that there is an overall desire to see countries like Iran leverage America's oil addiction for power. That much is a stated goal of Al Qaeda.

Bin Laden is a big picture guy, a financier. He's not the idea guy; he didn't come up with 9-11, but he made it viable.

So it ultimately depends on the idea guys, the quality of which remains unknown.

It's pretty obvious that for the past 30 years, most stateless terrorists work with explosives attached to a transport vehicle, be it plane, train, subway, truck, car or human. The hardest to secure on our side, and the biggest impact on their side, remain planes, trains and subways.

That's not a fixation: they go to war with the weapons they have, not the weapons they wish they had.

OBL prefers the spectacular and wants to remain the head jihadist, so this one probably had no date assigned to it, till the Lebanese invasion made briefly put Hezbullah's main man in the top spotlight.

OBL follows the Art of War model: attack at the enemy's perceived strength. After all the hoopla about safer airlines, he went where (he thought) we'd least expect it, at our airlines.

Will his future plans differ? Probably. Next time, look for a decoy operation like this, while cells elsewhere prepare simultaneous attacks.

Terrorism will persist long after OBL is dead, though. It can't be eradicated; it can only be contained. And occasionally we'll take some losses.

The best strategy for containment remains disposing of fissionable materials, to keep those losses relatively small

I thought the word on al-Qaeda was that we had degraded their infrastructure and that, while OBL might be giving general inspiration, more local organizations were almost certainly doing the planning in a decentralized way. So what OBL learns about operational planning is probably irrelevant.

Ding ding ding. It's become a loose branding rather than a franchise operation.

They let them run around until it was time to do the job. London bombs were the same, but they waited too long.

What is a terrorist. You'll probably see alot of 'reilgion' with these. Bin Laden was selling these off around the London bombings, so they are not really wanted from the beginning. So, where are the professionals? They are not local anymore. Spain was arranged by professionals using locals, the preferred method in terror is to get 'the enemy' to do the work for you; so Spain was tied heavily to Iraq and some bad agents who had these people killing before the Spain bombings.

One big blast might be what Isreal is going to get, so maybe Bin Laden needs to make decisions on where to work. Quality of the foreign terrorist has gone lower and Bin Laden has already made decisions on who he is keeping for his big bombs. You'll probably never see a 'domestic terrorist' in the US again.

Mormonism will come into play in some way or other, but I think Romney's lack of experience & his demeanor (he often comes off as a Boy Scout on speed) will play a more crucial role in his candidacy. Will people really turn to a candidate who comes to the campaign as lacking in experience as GWB was when we can see what such a lack of experience has led to in this administration ? Will they turn to a man who has practically no record to run on since he has been an absentee, hands-off Governor for most of his term ? He's desperately hoping his actions with the Big Dig fiasco will be his "Calvin Coolidge Moment" (i.e. analogous to the Boston Po

Here's "what's next" ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4783199.stm

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0811-06.htm

According to the scientists' data, Greenland's ice is melting at a rate three times faster than it was only five years ago. The estimate of the melting trend that has been observed for nearly a decade comes from a University of Texas team monitoring a satellite mission that measures changes in the Earth's gravity over the entire Greenland ice cap as the ice melts and the water flows down into the Arctic ocean [...] the global sea level, due to melting of the ice in Greenland and Antarctica combined, is already rising 10 times faster than the IPPC's tentative estimates, the two analyses indicate.

Global warming is an existential threat to human civilization, and indeed to the human species.

Terrorism is not.

bin laden's focus on airplanes makes perfect sense in this regard: that's where his greatest success occured. people tend to repeat the same strategies over and over and over even when using those strategies no longer make sense. you see it in investors; you see it in generals, and in every other walk of life.

Global warming is an existential threat to human civilization, and indeed to the human species.
Terrorism is not.
Posted by: SecularAnimist on August 11, 2006 at 1:31 PM | PERMALINK

S/A;
You're wasting your time.

It's way too late to stop it now.
That seems obvious.

There's only two things we can do - prepare for the effects, and make peace with your maker.

Personally, I'm stocking up on ammo. I guess food would be a good idea too.

I am always amazed at the incompetence of the Arab terrorists. They have to watch Mr. Wizard to learn how to make homemade explosives like a kid learning chemistry. Bush leaves the borders wide open, and the Arab terrorists don't get it. I suppose our immigration polices are so PC they don't have to bother to sneak in. Washington immigrant lovers: "These people, these Arab terrorists, SHOULD HAVE A PATH TO CITIZENSHIP as part of a comprehensive immigration reform package."

There is no defense against terrorism, and with Bush stirring up the Moslem world by being 100% behind Israel and killing Ayrabs for Christ in Iraq, I am frankly amazed we haven't had more terrorism since 9/11.

Osama_Been_Forgotten: Personally, I'm stocking up on ammo. I guess food would be a good idea too.

Perhaps if Mitt Romney runs for president he will popularize the Mormon teaching that everyone should store a year's supply of food in their home at all times.

OBF: It's way too late to stop it now.

I am pessimistic about the prospects for "stopping" anthropogenic global warming, but it is never to late to take action to prevent it from being worse than it will be if no action is taken.

"petting zoo in Tennessee"
Posted by: sullijan on August 11, 2006 at 10:35 AM |"

If that means what I think it means... Ew.
With Republicans like Neal Horsley running around, you just never know...

I want to see some public trials with some evidence presented. Trust us just won't cut it anymore.

Because the Republicans give Al Qaeda what it needs -- an atmosphere of fear in which to flourish. At this point the GOP and Al Qaeda may as well be working hand in glove.

It's a reciprocal arrangement. Al Qaeda provides the GOP with an atmosphere of fear as well.

When voters are hopeful, they vote Democrat; when they are fearful, they vote Republican.

GWB has no motivation in actually taking any actions that increase the nation's security, for to do so would sabotage his party's chances at the polls.

We should have killed that motherfucker when we had the chance. Bush and the war-profiteering neocons blew it.

They didn't blow it. It was all part of the plan. Taking out OBL at Tora Bora would have made it ten times harder to convince the voters to support the Iraq campaign.

What we really need to examine is just exactly why our world view is clashing so much with the Islamic extremist world view.

Because they're religious fanatics who hate the values and principles of western liberal democracy.

It's interesting that most or all of the suspects arrested in Britain yesterday were British citizens born and raised in the UK. Same as the suspects in the London tube and bus bombings a year ago.

This points to the huge problem European countries are having in assimilating immigrants. A welfare check and free health care just aren't going to do it.

Don P, posting as "GOP", wrote: "Because they're religious fanatics who hate the values and principles of western liberal democracy."

So are the Biblical-literalist Christian fundamentalist authoritarian theocratic anti-science fanatics with whom you happily make common cause to put right-wing extremist Republicans in power, you disgusting hypocrite.

GOPer says:

It's interesting that most or all of the suspects arrested in Britain yesterday were British citizens born and raised in the UK.... This points to the huge problem European countries are having in assimilating immigrants.

Likewise, that the people arrested for OKC bombing were native born USAmericans points to the problems the US is having with assimilating immigrants...

(This is too easy.)

What we really need to examine is just exactly why our world view is clashing so much with the Islamic extremist world view.

No, actually, what we need to examine is why in both the Western and Islamic parts of the world, extremist ideologies that favor clash of civilizations are gaining ground.

Likewise, that the people arrested for OKC bombing were native born USAmericans points to the problems the US is having with assimilating immigrants

No it doesn't. The Oklahoma City bombing had nothing to do with immigrants.

cmdicely wrote: No, actually, what we need to examine is why in both the Western and Islamic parts of the world, extremist ideologies that favor clash of civilizations are gaining ground.

Why: Oil.

"Ideologies" have always been used to manipulate the populations of countries to support their rulers' wars for access to and control of natural resources.

Isn't it convenient that the people who live on top of the world's largest reserves of oil are a "green crescent of evil"?

GOP neurons fire and he utters:

The Oklahoma City bombing had nothing to do with immigrants.

Good boy! Now complete the syllogism.

Now complete the syllogism.

Okay. The Oklahoma City bombing had nothing to do with immigrants, therefore Disputo's claim "that the people arrested for OKC bombing were native born USAmericans points to the problems the US is having with assimilating immigrants" is wrong and Disputo is an idiot.

It's interesting that most or all of the suspects arrested in Britain yesterday were British citizens born and raised in the UK. Same as the suspects in the London tube and bus bombings a year ago.

This points to the huge problem European countries are having in assimilating immigrants.

People born and raised in a country are the only people permanently residing in a country who are not immigrants.

I was going to hold GOP's hand and lead him through the complicated logic, but I see that cmdicely beat me to it.

cmdicely,

Native-born people with an immigrant parent or parents are generally referred to as second-generation immigrants. Most or all of the suspects arrested in Britain are second-generation Muslim immigrants. The fact that they apparently have not assimilated the values of western democracy, despite having been born and raised in Britain, but have instead adopted the values of Islamic fundamentalism is symptomatic of the huge problem European countries are having in assimilating their immigrant populations.

This is likely to be a continuing problem for European nations because their national identities are defined so strongly in terms of geography and ethnicity and shared history--"blood and soil." The challenge for Britain and other European countries with large immigrant communities is to remake their national identity in a way that respects their traditions and distinctive histories but that is also fully accessible to immigrants, especially non-western immigrants.

LOL @ GOP's wriggling form.

Since Timmy McVeigh was a, hmmm, fifth generation immigrant per GOP's def, I guess the OKC bombing was all about lack of immigrant assimilation too....

What GOP is calling "second generation immigrant" in a poor attempt to retcon his nonsensical post is more commonly referred to as "first generation American/British/whatever", that is, the first generation *after* the immigrant generation.

Disputo,

Since Timmy McVeigh was a, hmmm, fifth generation immigrant per GOP's def, I guess the OKC bombing was all about lack of immigrant assimilation too

I know you think the Oklahoma City bombing was about problems the US is having with assimilating immigrants. You already said you think that. You're wrong.

if anyone in security at Heathrow or LAX was even remotely aware of this "liquid" plot 10 hours earlier than the announcement of the arrests, it would be astounding news to me. my party of 35 kids, mostly teenage boys on a soccer team, and other parents left London with very many bottles of all kinds of liquids and arrived at LAX - breezing though customs and security with nary a nervous glance from any official. very curious.

I take, shockingly, a middle ground between GOP and cmdicely. For no doubt the last time ever.

GOP is (perish the thought) correct that European countries are having trouble with their Muslim populations, even those who are native-born children or grandchildren of immigrants. Many of them, especially young men, just aren't fitting in, getting jobs and settling down, and they identify increasingly as Muslim rather than as German or British. If "extremist ideologies" were the only problem, one would be hard-pressed to find the extremist right-wing ideologies that were posing such a problem in Germany or the UK. Much of the anti-Muslim sentiment in, say, the Netherlands is a matter not at all of the religious right, but of the "irate center", to adapt the NYT's term -- Labor Party voters furious at Muslim rejection of a center-left European consensus on social issues.

However, that's not to say that extremist ideologies as such aren't PART of the problem. The rise of Muslim separatism in the Netherlands was coterminous with the rise of "straight-talking" populist figures like Pim Fortuyn (and Theo van Gogh). Both of them were rebels against the "grayness" of Dutch consensus politics, particular in the '90s, when a "purple" right-left coalition of Labor and the laissez-faire conservative VVD (red and blue) largely sucked the air out of political debate. One could see BOTH the rise of Muslim separatism AND the rise of Fortuyn and the "norms and values" Christian Democratic center-right as signs of an identity politics-based rebellion against the gray middle of post-Cold War politics.

In this view, the fact that the US doesn't have much of a radical Muslim movement is partly to do with the fact that identity politics in the US have been DISAPPEARING over the last 10 years. We had that moment in the late '80s, and rejected it starting about '94. It's hard to conceive of a politician like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose success is grounded in her ethnic/religious identity, being anywhere near as successful in the US. We've been in a phase for the past decade where we're not really interested in voting for someone because of his/her amazing ethnic background story.

So, yeah, Europe is having major problems tackling the assimilation issue, and the worldwide rise of religious-irrationalist ideologies is a catastrophe. Now I'm gonna go have some ice cream.

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brooksfoe:

Good analysis (as per usual).

I'd add that America's pluralist immigration model is somewhat different than the twin poles of Europe's strict assimilationism (e.g. France) and loosey-goosey multiculturalism (e.g. The Netherlands).

In America, we don't hound Muslims to dress like us, nor do we huddle them off into segregated neighborhood enclaves. We *do*, though, insist that they live by our laws. Since we have no legacy of colonialism, we don't have large clusters of Muslims from the same country living together in close quarters and speaking their native language; our Muslim communities are much more diverse than they are in, say, England or France. So the community is more based generally on a common religion than it is on a sometimes intense ethnic/national solidarity. This helps along the process of assimilation much more constructively than the French chauvinist denial that "ghettoes" exist -- while squalid public housing in Paris suburbs filled with North African immigrants glaringly contradicts that lofty cultural ideal.

Identity politics I think is more a result than cause; our identity politics phase has faded as our vestiges of racial/ethnic/religious discrimination fade (asymtotically, to be sure). Europe has always had a conflict between the gray center of Christian/Social Democratic cold war consensus politics and various stripes of firey demagogues -- often with an identity politics feel whatever the agenda (consider the various National Front parties).

Had we proportional representation and a parliamentary-style small party tradition, things might have turned out more like Europe here. But perhaps that's also putting the cart before the horse ...

Bob

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