The Nazz
15-07-2005, 05:05
Not long after the 7/7 bombings in London, I started seeing all manner of conspiracy theories popping up on--where else?--the internet. Bush and Blair had planned them or at least let them happen to bolster their approval ratings, blah blah blah. Same sort of nonsensical crap that has followed the 9/11 attack theories (Bush, the Bilderburgers and Satan conspiring on that one, etc).
What I'm about to post is not a conspiracy theory, although it is an exploration of what possibly might be the law of unintended consequences at work in a very real and very dangerous way. This is not my work--it's the work of a blogger named John Aravosis, most famous for breaking the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert story. Here's the link to the larger story. (http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/07/bush-admin-may-be-responsible-for.html)
ABC news reported this evening that London has tied the bombings to an al Qaeda group that has been planning them for the last two years. The British thought they had stopped this planned attack with the arrest of 12 extremists last year. Obviously, they were wrong.
Here's the basics--last year, the British made a significant bust of a higher-up in al-Qaeda, a man named Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan. They confiscated Khan's laptop, which contained a ton of information on future plans of attack and other members of his cell. Once Khan was captured, he was turned and started sending emails to people he worked with. He was a deep-level mole.
Enter the Bush administration. Last August, the british arrested the above-mentioned 12 extremists. The same week, the Bush administration raised the terror alert level, in part because of information found on that computer. In an effort to justify the raising of the alert level, the administration gave out a bit too much information, and set the media on the trail of Khan. Once this happened, Khan's al Qaeda buddies figured out he'd been turned and they scarpered.
ABC News' terrorism expert said that the cell that carried out last week's attacks was likely activated after the arrests last year.
Most of this is a matter of public record, and links are provided at Americablog, as well as extensive quotes from the articles.
Now please understand what I'm saying here. I'm not saying that Bush is responsible for the attacks, nor am I saying that they wouldn't have happened even if this leak hadn't happened. I'm not God--I don't have that sort of information.
What I am saying is that actions taken even for innocent reasons--and I'm not quite willing to give the administration credit for being innocent in their reasons for that terror alert--often have unintended consequences, and sometimes those consequences are deadly for others. It would really be a shame if it turned out that a terror alert meant to make an already tense public even more nervous on the week before the opposition party's convention inadvertently caused British intelligence to miss out on an opportunity to close down a cell of terrorists that would eventually kill more than fifty people.
What I'm about to post is not a conspiracy theory, although it is an exploration of what possibly might be the law of unintended consequences at work in a very real and very dangerous way. This is not my work--it's the work of a blogger named John Aravosis, most famous for breaking the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert story. Here's the link to the larger story. (http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/07/bush-admin-may-be-responsible-for.html)
ABC news reported this evening that London has tied the bombings to an al Qaeda group that has been planning them for the last two years. The British thought they had stopped this planned attack with the arrest of 12 extremists last year. Obviously, they were wrong.
Here's the basics--last year, the British made a significant bust of a higher-up in al-Qaeda, a man named Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan. They confiscated Khan's laptop, which contained a ton of information on future plans of attack and other members of his cell. Once Khan was captured, he was turned and started sending emails to people he worked with. He was a deep-level mole.
Enter the Bush administration. Last August, the british arrested the above-mentioned 12 extremists. The same week, the Bush administration raised the terror alert level, in part because of information found on that computer. In an effort to justify the raising of the alert level, the administration gave out a bit too much information, and set the media on the trail of Khan. Once this happened, Khan's al Qaeda buddies figured out he'd been turned and they scarpered.
ABC News' terrorism expert said that the cell that carried out last week's attacks was likely activated after the arrests last year.
Most of this is a matter of public record, and links are provided at Americablog, as well as extensive quotes from the articles.
Now please understand what I'm saying here. I'm not saying that Bush is responsible for the attacks, nor am I saying that they wouldn't have happened even if this leak hadn't happened. I'm not God--I don't have that sort of information.
What I am saying is that actions taken even for innocent reasons--and I'm not quite willing to give the administration credit for being innocent in their reasons for that terror alert--often have unintended consequences, and sometimes those consequences are deadly for others. It would really be a shame if it turned out that a terror alert meant to make an already tense public even more nervous on the week before the opposition party's convention inadvertently caused British intelligence to miss out on an opportunity to close down a cell of terrorists that would eventually kill more than fifty people.