If you take off the tinfoil, how likely is it that Bush might have ...

[FormerRepublican]

...done something like this:

"Yet, maybe there is no such group. An MSNBC translator, Jacob Keryakes, claimed that the message allegedly sent by the "Secret Organization of al-Q'aeda in Europe" contained an error in one of the Koranic verses cited in the message. The translator said this suggests the claim may be phony. "This is not something al-Q'aeda would do," he said. Al-Q'aeda itself is likely a straw man. While, no doubt, there are people on the ground in colonized nations who are willing to use violence in a bid for their people's freedom, "terrorist" organizations can be co-opted and run by the intelligence operatives of the terrorists' purported targets. Osama bin Laden himself has a long history with the CIA.

With the unpopularity of the war in Iraq growing, and with Bush's political troubles mounting, bombing London now makes no sense for "honest terrorists," i.e., terrorists not being run by the US, which has used terrorism as a tool of foreign policy for decades. Why risk increasing Bush's popularity when it is at an all-time low? The way to get European troops out of Iraq is to get the Americans out. Would Denmark stay if the US left? Attacks in Europe strengthen Bush's "resolve" to stay the course, and the few nations who have not joined "the coalition of the leaving" would stay with the Americans. (Conservative Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi announced on July 8 that Italy would probably begin its withdrawal in September. Italy has been talking about a withdrawal for several months)."

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/071105Ramares/071105ramares.html

I'm just as likely as the next folk to think the corrupt administration could do just about anything, but I'm not sure they're sick enough yet to orchestrate a terrorist attack on London. The timing is a little funny, but strange coincidences have happened before.

What do you think? Too far for BushCo, or right down their alley?

[ButterflyBlood]

1. no

no motive or gain. They may be evil but there's no reason to do something like this.

[TheGoodCitizen]

2. Tube bombs 'almost simultaneous'

The three bombs on London underground trains on Thursday exploded almost simultaneously, police have said.

Scotland Yard said the attacks took place within 50 seconds of each other. It was previously thought they had taken place over a longer time period.

More...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4666591.stm

_________


Whoever DID carry out the bombings used HIGH Explosives and the bombings were carried out with Military precision... it's gotta make some people wonder!

Something I've learned from my US Army Daze... is that it's highly unlikely that you're average crew of thugs would be able to set off six explosions, using HIGH Explosives, almost simultaneously in different sections of a city.

[SweetLeftFoot]

7. If semi-literate

farm hands from South Armagh can wreak far more devastation on London - although given variois political considerations they would sometimes calkl in warnings to minimise civilian casualties - why shouldn't a group, or one person with combat experience in Iraq, Afghanistan or Chechnya not be able to do it?

[kiki]

8. Yeah, those Irishmen...

...they're all "semi-literate farm hands". To be sure, dey've only just got dat electrified tellyvision up dere.

Oh, and you might want to spell-check your posts.

[SweetLeftFoot]

14. Actually ...

Ballbag - if you do some research on the South Armagh Brigade, the Provos most effective unit, you'll find that many of the men involved in the Canary Wharf bombing were functionallu illiterate. I suggest you start with "Bandit Country" by Toby Harnden.

My point was not directed against the Irish - being of Irish descent and having lived in Dublin for a number of years that sorta thing is not my bag - it was more directed against farm types in general.

FWIW - if I was going to use a particular nation ro people as a model of ignorance, it would SOOOOOOOO be Americans.

[WI Independent]

9. How hard is it to set several timers to go off at the same time?

Or if they were suicide bombers, how hard is it to sync their watches? This doesn't seem like rocket science. And high explosives are not THAT hard to come by in some circles.

Many argue, quite credibly, that US/UK foreign policy is creating terrorist. Why is it so hard to believe that they would actually strike?

[LibertyorDeath]

3. Hi and welcome to DU good catch

They have every reason to do something like this

Things are not always what they seem.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Thu Jul-07-05 08:20 PM
Original message
BFEE is more than capable of bombing their own countrymen.


While I don't know who or what is responsible for the London bombings, I do know that the Bush Transnational Criminal Enterprise is more than capable of bombing their own.

If you don’t agree. Great. I respect your opinion.

But you may not have read about the Bolgna train station bombing in 1980, the CIA attack on Sheikh Fadlallah in 1985 or Operation NORTHWOODS of 1962.







In Bologna, ultra-rightwing Operation GLADIO operatives killed 85 people and wounded hundreds more in an attempt to lay blame on the left: from the liberals and progressives to the socialists and commies.



THE BOLOGNA TRAIN STATION BOMBING

A huge explosion at the Bologna train station two years after Moro's death may have whitened the hair of many Italians - not just for the grisly toll of 85 killed and more than 200 injured - but for the official inaction that followed. Although the investigating magistrates suspected neofascists, they were unable to issue credible arrest warrants for more than two years because of false data from the secret services. By that time, all but one of the five chief suspects, two of whom had ties to SID, had skipped the country. 74 The T4 explosive found at the scene matched the Gladio material used in Brescia, Peteano and other bombings, according to expert testimony before Judge Mastelloni. 75

In the trial, the judges cited the ``strategy of tension and its ties to `foreign powers.''' They also found the secret military and civilian structure tied into neofascist groups, P-2, and the secret services. 76 In short, they found the CIA and Gladio.

But their efforts to exact justice for the Bologna bombing came to nothing when, in 1990, the court of appeals acquitted all the alleged ``brains.'' P-2 head Gelli went free, as did two secret service chiefs whose perjury convictions were overturned. Four gladiators convicted of participating in an armed group also won appeals. That left Peteano as the only major bombing case with a conviction of the actual bomber, thanks to Vinciguerra's confession.

The sorry judicial record in these monstrous crimes showed how completely the Gladio network enveloped the army, police, secret services and the top courts. Thanks to P-2, with its 963 well-placed brothers, 77 the collusion also extended into the top levels of media and business.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

FRUITS OF GLADIO

By the early 1980s, however, court data revealed enough CIA fingerprints to provoke strong anti-U.S. sentiment. In 1981, the offices of three U.S. firms in Rome were bombed. In 1982, the Red Brigades kidnapped James L. Dozier, a U.S. general attached to NATO, calling him a ``Yankee hangman.'' 78 He was freed after five weeks by police commandos, reportedly with the help of the CIA's Mafia connections. 79 But damage to the U.S. image has been remarkably constrained considering what the U.S. did to Italian society and government for 50 years in the name of anticommunism.



CONTINUED…

http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/gladio.html









Remember St. Ronnie Pruneface's CIA director, Poppy Bush's one-time campaign manager and all around family friend, Mr. William Casey? He, a Roman Catholic, authorized the bombing of a certain Sheikh who may've been a bastard, but certainly wasn't a bastard worth killing 80 innocent people over in 1985.



Lebanon: Another civil war the United States felt compelled to take part in, leading to the terrible bombings of the American Embassy and Marine barracks in 1983, followed, in December of that year, by American ships firing some 700 shells into the Beirut mountains, missing their military targets but causing destruction in civilian areas. In 1985, William Casey and a Saudi prince conspired to eliminate Muslim leader Sheikh Fadlallah, believed to be connected to the attacks on the American facilities. This plot culminated in March when the men employed to carry out the elimination drove a car bomb into a Beirut suburb near Fadlallah's residence. The explosion took 80 lives, wounded 200, and left widespread devastation. Fadlallah escaped without injury.



CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/Reagan_CIA.html







NORTHWOODS was a strategy proposed by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff to stage terrorist incidents involving American citizens, including hijacking airliners, to build public support for an invasion of Cuba. The plan was rejected by President John F. Kennedy who then fired the Chairman of the JCS, Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer. Here’s a very good overview:



OPERATION NORTHWOODS:
US PLANNED FAKE TERROR ATTACKS ON CITIZENS
TO CREATE SUPPORT FOR CUBAN WAR

n his new exposé of the National Security Agency entitled Body of Secrets, author James Bamford highlights a set of proposals on Cuba by the Joint Chiefs of Staff codenamed OPERATION NORTHWOODS. This document, titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba” was provided by the JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, as the key component of Northwoods. Written in response to a request from the Chief of the Cuba Project, Col. Edward Lansdale, the Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” including “sink a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),” faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. Bamford himself writes that Operation Northwoods “may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.”

continued

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/

Gee. I guess we can’t all be good guys. Especially when our government adopts the means and methods of the enemy to defeat communism then, terrorism today and, when Rove gets his way, liberalism.



This guy got "fired" for opposing the right wing in Cuba, Vietnam and a probably a whole lot of places we haven't heard about.

"You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea." -- Medgar Evans

Skip Intro Donating Member (1000+ posts) Sat Jul-09-05 08:45 PM
Response to Original message
263. 2000, 9*11, Anthrax, TERROR, Patriot Act, 2002, Iraq, Wellstone, Osama,


Cheney, Hallibuton, Rumsfled, Saddam, Iraq, Condoleeza Rice, Iraq, Terror Alert! - Never mind, Bush, Saudi Arabia, 9*11, Iraq, Oil, Halliburton, Enron, Dems=Terrorists, 9*11, Iraq..LIES DEATH DESTRUCTION CHAOS....

Yet we insist upon projecting some basic humanity on this group, on this crowd, this gang. We insist they have a line which they will not cross. Yeah, they've slautered tens and tens of thousands of people for fake reasons, but SURELY they wouldn't stage some even that took fifty or so lives.

And shut up talking about what is within the realm of possibility. And how dare you even think it. My God, what would the people on the right think?

[LibertyorDeath]

4. Blair is determined to get to the bottom of it. LOL

As police and security services on Sunday continued searching for the bombers - thought to be Islamist terrorists - Downing Street said the prime minister believed an inquiry now into the outrage which killed at least 49 people would be a "ludicrous diversion."


http://news.ft.com/cms/s/8186face-f17a-11d9-9c3e-00000e ...

[rumpel]

5. Possible, right down their alley. too many coincidences so far for me...

[FormerRepublican]

6. I suppose I want to believe even the corrupt have their limits ...

...but perhaps I'm wrong. I just don't know. I do admit that there are a lot of things that are just plain off - I've read the tin foil stuff as well as what BushCo slurps out. But there's still that patriotic American inside me that wants to believe that our government, no matter how corrupt and despicable, would not go so far as to orchestrate an attack on our closest ally for political reasons.

I'm certainly not blind to some of the other crap they've pulled. But this?

Perhaps I'm just too naive for a BushCo world ...

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

10. the translation thang's been debunked

by Juan Cole

"The rumors that the statement has errors in the Arabic or the Quran citation are absolutely incorrect,"

http://www.juancole.com/

[Eloriel]

11. In general, NOTHING is too far for BushCo. Nothing.

So the question becomes for any given issue: does this fit their M.O.? Does it serve them? And so forth.

I don't really know re the London bombings and don't really have a strong opinion one way or the other (being satisfied to mull over the absolute horror of what it means to simply have the QUESTION about whether "our government" was involved or not, and despite what Kos and others smug, naive ostriches may think, not be a raving lunatic to be THINKING such questions). The only thing that keeps coming to mind is: how utterly simply it would be for some of our well-trained CIA types (or even freelancers who are "available" for such work) to pull something like that off. Snap. A piece of cake.

[DoYouEverWonder]

12. The message claiming responsibility for the London attack

appeared on the following website. It was taken down within a couple of hours. This is the same site that a lot of other 'al Qaeda' videos and statement first appear. The funny part is that a fellow named Jon David claims to have taken over this site in 2002. Here some info on him:




Registration Service Provided By: DIRECTI
Contact: +91.2256797500
Website: http://www.directi.com
Domain Name: ALNEDA.COM

Registrant:
SFP, Inc
Jon David ([e-mail] )
Po 312
Berlin
Maryland,21811
US
Tel. [phone]

Creation Date: 16-Jul-2002
Expiration Date: 16-Jul-2013



And here's an interview he did with Wired braggin about it:



How Al-Qaida Site Was Hijacked


Aug. 10, 2002

A Maryland hacker used simple Web tools like whois and traceroute -- as well as online translation software and an anti-cybersquatting service -- to take over the domain name of al-Qaida's website. And he's ready to do it again.

Jon Messner, the Internet entrepreneur who perpetrated the recent domain hijacking, used SnapName's Snapback service to obtain ownership of the domain www.alneda.com .

The switch in ownership was made on July 16, after the owners of alneda.com deleted its registration from an ISP in Malaysia. Messner believes this was in preparation to establish Al Neda on another server.

"It was a slippery bastard, but I've got it now," Messner laughs. "I own alneda.com."

<snip>

Now Messner was listed as Al Neda's owner.

At that point, Messner put up a copy of the original al-Qaida website on his new domain, with one subtle difference. "I put very simple CGI tracking on the site, so for five days I could trace back to nearly every hostile Islamic message board and website on the Internet."

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,54455,00.html


According to the registery info, Messner owns this site until 2013. Now tell me again, who and what is behind these attacks?

[rasputin1952]

13. Fueling the fire is not one of my specialties...

but I would say, anything is possible, regardless of how far-fetched it seems.

I believe al-Qaeda and/or other radicals perpetrated the UK bombings.

Timing explosives to go off simultaneously is easy enough, digital timers make it easier that analog.

I despise bush with a passion; but I'm not gonna place this at the administration's feet as being directly involved. I will state I believe that bush and his minions have advanced the cause of terrorism and swelled the ranks of the "Terrorist Brigade", but I, in all honesty, cannot see where these bombings are directly attributable to bush/admin.

Conspiracy theories are fine to hash out some inconsistencies...but the UK bombiings appear to be cut and dried al-Qaeda. I would need some substantial evidence before I started calling this into the conspiracy theater.