[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [WBPF] The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?

[Morton K. Brussel]

I received this from a member of another list serve. I think it is  
very important; we are told almost nothing of the actual evidence  
against these supposed plotters of terror. It seems to me that this  
great plot is a farce not dissimilar to the WMD threat promulgated  
before the Iraq aggression, and also similar to the anthrax bubble. -- 
mkb

> The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?
> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14541.htm
> By Craig Murray
>
> 08/14/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- I have been reading  
> very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse  
> the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so- 
> called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security  
> experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having  
> had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge  
> amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been  
> inside the spin machine.
>
> So this, I believe, is the true story.
>
> None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a  
> plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the  
> efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a  
> plane bomber for quite some time.
>
> In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases  
> passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond  
> reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with  
> suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in  
> internet chat rooms.
>
> What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance  
> for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not  
> just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated  
> the need for early arrests.
>
> Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this  
> amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather  
> extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of  
> course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways  
> of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan,  
> you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is  
> it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and  
> more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it  
> doesn't give is the truth.
>
> The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being  
> wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago.  
> That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might  
> also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at  
> play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large  
> transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too  
> unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is  
> criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with  
> terrorism.
>
> We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair  
> discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the  
> answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political  
> trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from  
> Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to  
> the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they  
> have been shovelled.
>
> We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home  
> Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil  
> threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the  
> need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on,  
> according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and  
> minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence  
> that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best  
> nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the  
> night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week  
> old baby.
>
> For those who don't know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened  
> Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at  
> Stirling Univeristy he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer", (in  
> days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students'  
> Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very  
> substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who  
> deviated from the Party line.
>
> We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on  
> to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the  
> "Loner" profile you would expect - a tiny percentage of suicide  
> bombers have happy marriages and young children. As they were all  
> under surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch  
> lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed  
> closer to maturity - that is certainly what we would have done with  
> the IRA.
>
> In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the  
> timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of  
> the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist  
> legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything.  
> That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of  
> those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few - just over  
> two per cent of arrests - who are convicted, are not convicted of  
> anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police  
> happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they  
> had shattered.
>
> Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.
>
> As Britain's outspoken Ambassador to the Central Asian Republic of  
> Uzbekistan, Craig Murray helped expose vicious human rights abuses  
> by the US-funded regime of Islam Karimov. He is now a prominent  
> critic of Western policy in the region. Visit his website http:// 
> www.craigmurray.org.uk
>