Phony Terror Reaches Astonishing New Lows

A thoroughly unauthenticated audio tape, allegedly from the putative "terror group" called "al-Q'aida in Iraq", was released earlier today and has been the subject of some extremely uncritical "reporting", especially in American "news" media.

Meanwhile, in Britain, the "news" reports are trumpeting a "major" speech from the supposedly "anti-terror" wing of their secret government. Looks like another big terror-alert weekend looming. In light of some recent news (Democrats take control of both houses of Congress, Dumsfeld set to resign and may face charges for war crimes, and so on), it makes sense to say, once again, "How Incredibly Convenient!!"

From the UPI wire service: Al-Qaida message hails U.S. elections

A statement reportedly from the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq saluted Republican defeats in Tuesday's U.S. elections.

The audio message, said to be from Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, hailed Democrat victories as a move in the right direction as the United States "voted for a level of reason," the BBC said.

Outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped down to flee the Iraqi battlefield, the message said, and urged U.S. President Bush to "stay on the battleground."

Muhajir, also known as Ayyub al-Masri, has been identified by U.S. forces as the successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed in a raid last June.

Ireland Online has an even wider variety of lurid ludicrous details: Al-Qaida: We'll blow up the White House

Al Qaida’s leader in Iraq today vowed his fighters will never rest until they have blown up the White House and reached Jerusalem.

In an audio tape made available on militant websites, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir claimed to be winning the war in Iraq and said the US President was “stupid”.

It's hard to imagine where he got that idea!

He praised the Republican defeat in the US midterm elections as “reasonable”, and claimed the al Qaida army has 12,000 fighters in Iraq, ready to die for their cause.
...
“We haven’t had enough of your blood yet,” he told the US.

He called on Mr Bush to remain “steadfast in the battlefield” so al Qaida would have more opportunities to fight his soldiers.

“We call on the lame duck (Bush) not to hurry up in escaping the same way the defence minister did,” he said, referring to the removal of Donald Rumsfeld as US Defence Secretary following the Democrats’ victory in Midterm elections.

“They are getting ready to leave, because they are no longer capable of staying,” the al Qaida leader said.

“Remain steadfast in the battlefield you coward,” he called on the US President.

“We will not rest from our Jihad until we are under the olive trees of Rumieh and we have blown up the filthiest house – which is called the White House,” al-Muhajir said.

Blowing up the filthiest house? From under the olive trees of Rumieh? Yeah, sure!

Of all the media reports I have seen so far, only the BBC has mentioned that the tape is unauthenticated. 'Iraq al-Qaeda' welcomes US poll

A statement purportedly from the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq hails the defeat of Republicans in the US mid-term polls.

The audio message, whose authenticity has not been verified, was published on Islamist websites and was said to be the voice of Abu Hamza al-Muhajir.

The Democrats' victory in Tuesday's Congressional elections was a move in the right direction, the speaker said.

Outgoing US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had stepped down to flee the Iraqi battlefield, he added.

And so on ... are you scared yet?

Well, we should be scared, because we know who is behind all this, and we also know that they are ruthless and wicked, fabulously wealthy, and embedded deep within our own government.

Oops! Did I really say that? Well, what do you know?

Bring me the alleged Islamist website that hosts this audio tape! Where is it hosted this time? London? Houston? Maryland? And why does it always turn out this way?

Every major "terrorist" attack in recent memory has been done by "terror cells" heavily infested with agents of CIA and/or FBI and/or MI5 and/or MI6. Every major terror alert has turned out to be phony, overblown, premature or all of the above. And now in Britain, the fear-mongering is moving up a couple of notches.

From the Independent: MI5 head warns of up to 30 terror plots at work in Britain

There are up to 30 alleged "mass casualty" terror plots in operation in Britain, as well as hundreds of young British Muslims on a path to radicalisation, the head of MI5 has said.

In an unprecedented public announcement yesterday, the MI5 director general, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, revealed that the caseload of the Security Services had risen by 80 per cent since January, and that the counter-terrorism agency was fighting to keep the rapidly growing threat under control

Describing the scale of the home-grown terrorist problem, she said MI5 and the police were tackling 200 groups or networks totalling more than 1,600 identified individuals in the UK who were "actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts".

And what is the reason for this unprecendented announcement? Are Britons finally starting to realize that the terror alerts that nearly shut down their airports in August were politically timed and seriously overblown? Or are they just getting a bit jaded?

For those who are jaded, she adds:

Islamic militants linked to al -Qa'ida were recruiting teenagers to carry out attacks using chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology.

And for those who are starting to figure all this out, here's an expecially juicy morsel:

Dame Manningham-Buller said she was not seeking to be alarmist, and did not wish to stir up fear.

Oh no! Who would ever suspect that she wished to stir up fear?

But not to worry! Here comes Tony Blair to the rescue with a statement that, on the face of it, seems to condemn his "anti-terror" program for incompetence. As reported by the New York Times: Blair Says Terrorist Threat to Last ‘a Generation’

Prime Minister Tony Blair said today that the threat from home-grown Islamic terrorism would last “a generation,” reinforcing a highly unusual warning by the head of the MI5 domestic intelligence agency that some 1,600 suspects in 200 terrorist conspiracies were under surveillance.

And so on.

I can never resist the urge to yawn when I listen to this particular chronically lying sack of fertilizer.

The NYT article takes some pains to reproduce the grand recurring canard of British/American anti-terror spin, which in this instance comes out as:

Mrs. Manningham-Buller echoed arguments made by Mr. Blair, who has resisted critics’ accusations that his support of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan had made Britain a target for terrorist attack. “Let there be no doubt about this,” she said, “the international terrorist threat to this country is not new. It began before Iraq, before Afghanistan and before 9/11.”

As I have pointed out numerous times, apparently without making a dent in the official line, none of this is relevant to anything the critics of the Iraq war have been saying. We are saying the war makes terrorism worse. We never said there was no terrorism before the war started, or before the war in Afghanistan started, or before the obviously false-flagged attacks of 9/11. But I digress.

The NYT does come close to answering a question I posed earlier, however:

Historically, the head of MI5 does not make such public pronouncements. Mrs. Manningham-Buller acknowledged in a speech to academics Thursday night: “I rarely speak in public. I prefer to avoid the limelight and get on with my job.”

But it was a sign of changed times — and, perhaps of MI5’s campaign to secure more government funding and expand its ranks of agents and recruits — that the text of her speech was posted today on the MI5 Web site...

The campaign to secure more funding is surely only a part of the motivation, is it not?

Looking at it from another angle, the Times of India plays a politically correct game (given its position) by highlighting the revelation of Pakistani connections, but without tracing them all the way to their source. UK's 'serious' terror threat linked to Pak

Britain's lead security service is battling to contain a rapidly growing terrorist threat, represented by at least 30 serious plots that "often have links back to Al-Qaida in Pakistan", MI5's chief has revealed in a rare public speech.
...
In the first clear public indication that Pakistan has firmly and damagingly been identified as the locus of international Islamist terrorism, the MI5 chief laid out the dangerous support provided to "largely British foot soldiers (of Al-Qaida) here" by Pakistan-based radical ideologues.

In a startlingly specific speech, she said, "We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and to damage our economy. What do I mean by numerous? Five? Ten? No, nearer 30 that we currently know of. These plots often have linked back to Al-Qaida in Pakistan and through those links Al-Qaida gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale."

If you're having trouble keeping all this straight, you are certainly not alone.

Kurt Nimmo has been doing excellent work on this story (and others), and a series of excerpts from his most recent post on the subject will help you to understand where all this terror is coming from:

“Describing the scale of the home-grown terrorist problem, she said MI5 and the police were tackling 200 groups or networks totalling more than 1,600 identified individuals in the UK who were ‘actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts,’” never mind that such terrorist acts rarely come to fruition, usually instead sputtering out into absurd allegations of liquid bombs and other fantastical plots nipped in the bud, or so we are expected to believe, that is after we suspend credibility, again for the umpteenth time.
...
A bit of Google sleuthing produces embarrassing results on the depth and breadth of British involvement in terrorism. For instance, as it now appears, the so-called Dirty War in Northern Ireland was an MI5 affair, with the Brits going so far as to provide “infra-red equipment which was used to provide the IRA with state-of-the-art bomb detonation technology,” according to the Sunday Herald. According to “a former soldier who joined the Provisional IRA at army intelligence’s request,” reported the Guardian in 2002, both MI5 and the FBI were in on the act. As well, it turns out some of the most violent and feared members of the IRA were in fact members of Britain’s special forces, including John Joe Magee, billed as the IRA’s “torturer-in-chief,” again according to Neil Mackay, Home Affairs Editor of the Sunday Herald.
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British intelligence put Abu Qatada—the “alleged spiritual leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network,” “Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe,” and “believed by several European countries to be a pivotal figure in international terrorism”—up in a safe house, an assertion apparently corroborated by French intelligence, according to the Guardian. Instead of delivering Qatada to justice, “British security services offered him a chance to escape to Afghanistan,” the Guardian reported elsewhere. In fact, if we are to believe a report published by the Times Online, Qatada “has been revealed as a double agent working for MI5.”
...
Haroon Rashid Aswat, [...] “the mastermind of all the bombings in London,” according to intelligence expert John Loftus [...] had connections to British intelligence and while “the entire British police are out chasing him … one wing of the British government, MI-6 or the British Secret Service, has been hiding him.”
...
According to two French intelligence experts, [...] “British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi in 1996 and thwarted early attempts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice,” the London Observer reported in November, 2002.
...
Because “of the sheer scale of what MI5 faces, the issue” of preventing terrorism “is a daunting one,” Manningham-Buller told the department of contemporary British History at Queen Mary College in London. Or rather, considering the above, because of the sheer scale of what MI5, MI6, the CIA, FBI, Mossad have created through collaboration, the issue of preventing “30 alleged ‘mass casualty’ terror plots” will be daunting unless the British people consent to live in a police state.

Daunting indeed.

You may notice that some of the most damning indictments of the British intelligence services have come from the French. This may be partially due to political correctness, but as Webster Tarpley has pointed out:

NATO intelligence is essentially the British and the US acting together [...] De Gaulle kicked NATO out of France in 1966, and the French have been relatively free [...] of the kind of terrorism that you have in Germany and Italy… and Greece where the NATO infrastructure was very strong. So what he was suggesting was that if you kick out NATO, you won’t have a terrorist problem. Meaning, terrorism comes from NATO intelligence...

Have a nice weekend.

Boo!