Little-Acorn
Gold Member
Q.: How did the authorities discover the recent plot to blow up airliners in flight with liquid explosives?
A.: By the U.S. tapping into international calls and sharing the results with the British government.
You know, the program to tap into calls going between the U.S. and known Al Qaeda numbers in Europe and vice versa? The one the leftists screamed bloody murder about, and tried to mischaracterize as "domestic wiretapping" as though any of the calls were totally inside the U.S., as an excuse to shut it down?
The plot was evidently to blow up 10 airliners gong between England and the U.S. Airliners following that route aren't little. Some hold as many as 300 or even 400 passengers each. They probably wouldn't all be full, but it's reasonable to guess that they probably would have averaged 200 passengers each or so. Times 10 is around 2,000 people or more on those planes.
If the Democrat extremists had been successful in their efforts to shut down the program last year, it's possible that this terror plot might never have been discovered in time to do anything about it, before 2,000 people were blown up and fell flaming into the ocean.
I don't know if authorities have found out which flights on which dates were targeted. If they have, it might be interesting to get the passenger lists when the flights finally take off, and contact the people who were on those flights, and their loved ones waiting for them at home. Some would probably be Americans, some British, and some from other countries.
If we could contact them all and take a poll, how many do you suppose would now say they will still vote for the Democrat party, or whichever party in their country harbors the extreme-left don't-fight-the-terrorists crowd? How many would have voted for them last week before the plot was revealed, and how many would change their votes now?
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P.S. MODS: If an article is used only for supporting evidence, but the post isn't really about the article itself, does the title of the thread still have to match the title of the article anyway?
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http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1225453,00.html
Thwarting the Airline Plot: Inside the Investigation
Exclusive: U.S. picked up the suspects' chatter and shared it with British authorities
Posted Thursday, Aug. 10, 2006
Wednesday night was a long and troubling one for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. A bubbling plot by British citizens to blow up airplanes had come to a boil in the past three days, and as British authorities arrested dozens of suspects around London, it was Chertoff's job to coordinate the U.S. defenses. Scary intelligence reports pop up all the time, but this particular terror operation got close enough to being carried out that it rattled even the normally sedate Chertoff. "Very seldom do things get to me," he told Rep. Peter King, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, in a phone call late Wednesday night. "This one has really gotten to me."
Britain's MI-5 intelligence service and Scotland Yard had been tracking the plot for several months, but only in the past two weeks had the plotters' planning begun to crystallize, senior U.S. officials tell TIME. In the two or three days before the arrests, the cell was going operational, and authorities were pressed into action. MI5 and Scotland Yard agents tracked the plotters from the ground, while a knowledgeable American official says U.S. intelligence provided London authorities with intercepts of the group's communications.
(Full text of the article can be read at the above URL)
A.: By the U.S. tapping into international calls and sharing the results with the British government.
You know, the program to tap into calls going between the U.S. and known Al Qaeda numbers in Europe and vice versa? The one the leftists screamed bloody murder about, and tried to mischaracterize as "domestic wiretapping" as though any of the calls were totally inside the U.S., as an excuse to shut it down?
The plot was evidently to blow up 10 airliners gong between England and the U.S. Airliners following that route aren't little. Some hold as many as 300 or even 400 passengers each. They probably wouldn't all be full, but it's reasonable to guess that they probably would have averaged 200 passengers each or so. Times 10 is around 2,000 people or more on those planes.
If the Democrat extremists had been successful in their efforts to shut down the program last year, it's possible that this terror plot might never have been discovered in time to do anything about it, before 2,000 people were blown up and fell flaming into the ocean.
I don't know if authorities have found out which flights on which dates were targeted. If they have, it might be interesting to get the passenger lists when the flights finally take off, and contact the people who were on those flights, and their loved ones waiting for them at home. Some would probably be Americans, some British, and some from other countries.
If we could contact them all and take a poll, how many do you suppose would now say they will still vote for the Democrat party, or whichever party in their country harbors the extreme-left don't-fight-the-terrorists crowd? How many would have voted for them last week before the plot was revealed, and how many would change their votes now?
------------------
P.S. MODS: If an article is used only for supporting evidence, but the post isn't really about the article itself, does the title of the thread still have to match the title of the article anyway?
----------------------------------------------
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1225453,00.html
Thwarting the Airline Plot: Inside the Investigation
Exclusive: U.S. picked up the suspects' chatter and shared it with British authorities
Posted Thursday, Aug. 10, 2006
Wednesday night was a long and troubling one for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. A bubbling plot by British citizens to blow up airplanes had come to a boil in the past three days, and as British authorities arrested dozens of suspects around London, it was Chertoff's job to coordinate the U.S. defenses. Scary intelligence reports pop up all the time, but this particular terror operation got close enough to being carried out that it rattled even the normally sedate Chertoff. "Very seldom do things get to me," he told Rep. Peter King, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, in a phone call late Wednesday night. "This one has really gotten to me."
Britain's MI-5 intelligence service and Scotland Yard had been tracking the plot for several months, but only in the past two weeks had the plotters' planning begun to crystallize, senior U.S. officials tell TIME. In the two or three days before the arrests, the cell was going operational, and authorities were pressed into action. MI5 and Scotland Yard agents tracked the plotters from the ground, while a knowledgeable American official says U.S. intelligence provided London authorities with intercepts of the group's communications.
(Full text of the article can be read at the above URL)
