Friday, May 11, 2012

Left Side of the Aisle #56 - Part 2

Possible plot to attack US airliner

I want to mention very briefly the business about the supposed foiled plot to blow up a US airliner. (I call it "supposed" because there's been no trial yet. So right now we should consider it an allegation, not a fact.)

I note that after a little hemming and hawing, it develops that the supposed suicide bomber was either a plant, possibly from Saudi intelligence, or someone who became an informant early on in the planning of this business and the people involved had been tracked for several weeks.

And so another dastardly plot, the revealing of which is supposed to leave us trembling in fear of what could have happened and whose primary purpose seems to have been justifying the use of the full-body scanners - the strip scanners - at airports, turns out in fact to have been another plot that had no real chance of going anywhere.

Understand, there was good work done here (assuming guilt, of course). I am not mocking the work. But I do feel the need to point out that over 10 years ago, on January 5, 2002, in an unpublished op-ed, I wrote that
patient police work of effective investigation and intelligence has done and will do more to oppose terrorism than all our bombing sorties combined.
I think this latest case is just another proof, if proof was still needed, of that simple truth.

Sources:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/09/us-usa-security-plot-idUSBRE8471AX20120509
http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/double-agent-was-key-to-halting-plot/article_787d158c-de0c-5291-9081-7c2c069a8120.html

No comments:

 
// I Support The Occupy Movement : banner and script by @jeffcouturer / jeffcouturier.com (v1.2) document.write('
I support the OCCUPY movement
');function occupySwap(whichState){if(whichState==1){document.getElementById('occupyimg').src="https://sites.google.com/site/occupybanners/home/isupportoccupy-right-blue.png"}else{document.getElementById('occupyimg').src="https://sites.google.com/site/occupybanners/home/isupportoccupy-right-red.png"}} document.write('');