Sullivan on the British bomb plot:
So far, no one has been charged in the alleged terror plot to blow up several airplanes across the Atlantic. No evidence has been produced supporting the contention that such a plot was indeed imminent. Forgive me if my skepticism just ratcheted up a little notch. Under a law that the Tories helped weaken, the suspects can be held without charges for up to 28 days. Those days are ticking by. Remember: the British authorities had all these people under surveillance; they did not want to act last week; there was no imminent threat of anything but a possible "dummy-run" ...
I'd be interested in the number of plotters who had passports. How could they even stage a dummy-run with no passports? And what bomb-making materials did they actually have? These seem like legitimate questions to me; the British authorities have produced no evidence so far. If the only evidence they have was from torturing someone in Pakistan, then they have nothing that can stand up in anything like a court. I wonder if this story is going to get more interesting. I wonder if Lieberman's defeat, the resilience of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the emergence of a Hezbollah-style government in Iraq had any bearing on the decision by Bush and Blair to pre-empt the British police and order this alleged plot disabled. I wish I didn't find these questions popping into my head. But the alternative is to trust the Bush administration.
Been there. Done that. Learned my lesson.
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No he doesn't. Not anymore at least. Why do you expect Sullivan to be privy to evidence being acquired in an ongoing investigation?
Besides that, do you honestly believe that Britain so despises Ned Lamont that they faked a terror plot and disrupted dozens of lives simply to help his opponent? Get real.
As Sullivan implies, his hatred for Bush is so overpowering that he'd rather believe some cockamamy conspiracy theory than face the truth, at least if it doesn't make Bush look bad.
That's just sad.
The question isn't whether there was a faked terror plot--the question is how credible a threat these terrorists really were. Did they have a clue what they were doing, or were they bozos like the Seas of David guys?
Also see Perry Metzger on the credibility of this plot from a chemistry perspective.
I think that the British have different laws, restricting what can be said about suspects when court cases are pending. If nothing has been said, it doesn't necessarily mean that they don't have additional evidence, but that they don't want to damage their chances of successfully prosecuting.
Having just witnessed the insanity of the Duke Lacrosse Rape fiasco, specifically the trial by media aspects of it once the DA and defendants lawyers started making statements to the media, I can only think that it is a good thing.
Not that I'm commenting on the credibility of this plot or the arrests. I probably have some imminent international travel in the next few months, so I hope that it'll prove to have been overzealousness on the part of the British, rather than an actual plot.
"The question isn't whether there was a faked terror plot--the question is how credible a threat these terrorists really were."
But who CARES how credible their plan was? Isn't their goal more important? As a chemical engineer, I can think of dozens of liquid concoctions that would be 'splosive. I don't have the knowledge of how much of an explosion is required to pop open a plane, but I doubt it's much. I don't feel qualified to comment further on the subject.
Regardless, the point remains: Sullivan has lost it. I had the luxury of being an audience member of The Colbert Report when he was being interviewed. His big thing at the time was 'we need to legalize gay marriage'. Who TF cares about such a trivial issue? My wife and I lived together for 6 years before we got married. Know what? There's no freakin' difference now that we are!
Quit whining, Andrew Sullivan. Marry your boyfriend in your heart. That's more than enough. And go back to England or wherever you're from (I'm guessing. His accent was weird). We need no more whiners in America. Trust me, we're full up.
>Who TF cares about such a trivial issue?
A lot of people (straight and gay) who aren't you.
>My wife and I lived together for 6 years before we got married. Know what? There's no freakin' difference now that we are!
Yes there is. You and she now share some legal rights (of inheritance etc) that you didn't have before. All Sullivan is asking for is the same rights for himself and his partner.
>His accent was weird
That about sums it up as far as I'm concerned. Lord knows, Americans don't have "weird" accents, especially those Southern accents. The rest of the world sees those as perfectly "normal".
And this by the way, Kevin, more or less indicates up what an idiot you are .. the whole "France = Surrender" line is pathetic (and historically inaccurate).
There's been a lot of reporting on the British news that MI5 wanted to wait a few more weeks before making arrests, because they wanted more evidence, and none of the suspects had bought tickets and some of them didn't have passports. And considering the state of our passport office that means they weren't flying for some time. Because of the law here, it's a bad idea to arrest someone in these cases unless you have all the evidence. The general consensus seems to be that the US pressured the British to act now.
Mr. Lynch,
>Yes there is.
No, there isn't. It's just a fake reason to complain about something. If you are overly concerned about inheriting money, there is a thing called a will. Look into it. If you are concerned about being able to see your loved one in a hospital, don't be. The rules have changed, and you can do it without incident.
>Americans don't have "weird" accents, especially those Southern accents.
Duh. By weird, I did not mean "strange", I meant "not quite English". If you took the half a second required to comprehend the comment, you'd know that. Please pay attention. I hate having to 'splain things.
>the whole "France = Surrender" line is pathetic (and historically inaccurate).
You are absolutely correct. Other than surrendering to Germany in 1945 of course. And other than surrendering land to Algeria in the 60's. Oh and other than their surrender to Vietnamese rebels. Oh yeah, and other than their recent surrender to the car flaming youths of Paris... Other than those, you are right. They haven't surrendered to anyone in 100 years!
It's odd that my post does not even mention 'surrender', and yet you came to that conclusion! It's also odd that you'd rather attack me personally than debate the terror plot issue. I wonder what conclusions can be drawn from this knowledge?
Chris, do you think that they were going to get their passports legally? There's been a lot of reporting in the British news that they would have already made a dry run if they were not arrested. The general consensus by no means seems to be that the US applied pressure. That's just more wild-eyed conspiracy theory crap brought to you by the people who believe that 9/11 was an inside job. *sigh* Did I wander on to one of those crazy "don't trust America" sites?