democracy-watch

Juan Cole yesterday (July 15 05)

"John Aravosis at AmericaBlog brings up the awful possibility, based on an ABC report, that the Public Relations-hungry Bush administration may have interfered with a British and Pakistani investigation of an al-Qaeda plot to bomb London that ties into July 7"
The article her refers to has as its headline:Bush admin may be responsible for botching effort to thwart London bombing

At the time of the arrest of Khan in Pakistan, warmwell wrote: (Extract from
warmwell archive )

"... the Pakistanis could easily have held a press conference to trumpet their new captive. This decision to keep the arrest quiet appears to have been made because Khan had been "flipped," i.e., had become a double agent and continued to have email contact with al-Qaeda members in London."

Oh fatuous day....We see that Mr Blair has been trotting out the "What was September 11 2001 the reprisal for?" argument
again - as if this were an unanswerable rhetorical question and that the planes crashed into the World Trade Center in a gratuitous act of murderous but unfocussed hatred.

Bombs not revenge for Iraq - Blair WMN "...Tony Blair has insisted the London bombings were not motivated by revenge for the invasion of Iraq."

It leaves one reeling.
Professor Cole again

(Jack Straw) "...seems unaware that according to the September 11 Commission report, al-Qaeda conceived 9/11 in some large part as a punishment on the US for supporting Ariel Sharon's iron fist policies toward the Palestinians. Bin Laden had wanted to move the operation up in response to Sharon's threatening visit to the Temple Mount, and again in response to the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp, which left 4,000 persons homeless. Khalid Shaikh Muhammad argued in each case that the operation just was not ready. As for Straw's contention that September 11 caused the Iraq war, he should be reminded that Paul O'Neil reported that the very first Bush cabinet meeting he attended, in late January 2001, was "all about Iraq" and that the 9/11 Commission found no evidence for operational cooperation between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda..."

And Seumas Milne's It Is an Insult to the Dead to Deny the Link with Iraq is clear:

"...The central goal of the al-Qaida-inspired campaign, as its statements have regularly spelled out, is the withdrawal of US and other western forces from the Arab and Muslim world, an end to support for Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and a halt to support for oil-lubricated despots throughout the region. Those are also goals that unite an overwhelming majority of Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere and give al-Qaida and its allies the chance to recruit and operate - in a way that their extreme religious conservatism or dreams of restoring the medieval caliphate never would. As even Osama bin Laden asked in his US election-timed video: if it was western freedom al-Qaida hated, "Why do we not strike Sweden?" ..."

On the subject of the young cannon fodder who seem to have set the bombs, an emailer who was herself approached in her South African youth to take part in clandestine activity, writes,

".... Is it really so strange that, in the current political climate, and in a country where many conventional people feel disaffected and impotent to have their voices listened to - that some vulnerable people can be recruited by the wicked who think that bombs and fear are the only way to effect change?"