Some Fishin' Accomplished: Life Sentences For Three Convicted "Liquid Bombers"

Tanvir Hussain

Tanvir Hussain, Assad Sarwar and Abdulla Ahmed Ali, the three so-called "liquid bombers" whom the British criminal justice system managed to convict on September 7, 2009, were sentenced to life a week later, with no chance of parole for 32, 36 and 40 years, respectively.

Only the least skeptical among us could fail to note the coincidence by which the convictions and sentences were both handed down within a few days of the eighth anniversary of the "terror attacks" that the "transatlantic airline bombing plot" was said to rival.

Immediately after the convictions were announced, the tone of the story shifted in an entirely predictable and globally uniform manner. Which is to say that the convictions and sentences have moved the story of the "liquid bombers" from the realm of bizarre terrorist fiction to the nearby realm of bizarre officially sanctioned government propaganda terrorist fiction.

A cynical observer could be forgiven for assuming that this long-awaited transition would be sufficient to bring this astonishingly odd story to a close. But such does not appear to be the case.

Liquid Bombers On Trial: Jury Sees Martyrdom Videos, Crown Identifies Targets

The trial of the so-called "Liquid Bombers" has begun in London. As you may recall, twenty-five people were arrested in August of 2006 in connection with an alleged plot to assemble and detonate bombs on board transatlantic airliners, killing hundreds or thousands or "hundreds of thousands" of people.

Of the twenty-five who were arrested, fourteen were released without charges; the remaining eleven are now on trial. Eight of them are charged with conspiracy to murder, three with lesser offenses. The trial is expected to last six to eight months.

Six of the eight charged with conspiracy to murder made martyrdom videos, excerpts of which were shown to the jury last week. Everyone says these martyrdom videos are "chilling", but nobody says why. And the actual contents are reported almost nowhere.

The fullest excerpts available were reported by The Scotsman and are reproduced here along with photos courtesy of The Telegraph:

Abdulla Ahmed Ali

Ali is pegged as one of the ringleaders.

YOU show more care and concern for animals than you do for the Muslim ummah [the Islamic nation]…

Thanks to God I swear by Allah, I have the desire since the age of 15/16 to participate in jihad in the path of Allah.

I had the desire since then to punish the kuffar [non-believers] for the evil they are doing.

I had the desire since then for jannah [paradise] for the Koran. I want to go to my prophet and his companions.

Leave us alone. Stop meddling in our affairs and we will leave you alone.

Otherwise expect floods of martyr operations against you and we will take our revenge and anger, ripping amongst your people and scattering the people and your body parts and your people's body parts responsible for these wars and oppression decorating the streets.

Ibrahim Savant

ALL Muslims take heed – remove yourself from the grasp of the kuffar [non-believer] before you are counted as one of them.

Do not be content with your council houses and businesses and western lifestyle…

All Muslims feel the need to dust your feet in the training camps of jihad where men are made.

Cease debate and enter the battlefields seeking paradise. Mujahideen, for years I've desired to meet you, to walk the paths you've walked, to sacrifice what you have sacrificed. Now Allah has honoured me with an invitation to his kingdom.

Obviously after this beautiful operation they will accuse us brothers of all sorts of things and most of the things they will accuse us of is killing for the sake of killing, hating freedom, hating the west, being fed up with our lives.

Arafat Waheed Khan

WE WILL rain upon you such a terror and destruction that you will never feel peace and security. There will be floods of martyrdom operations and bombs falling through your lands. There will be daily torment in this world and a greater torment awaiting in the hereafter. Now I'd like to address the bootlickers who stand shoulder to shoulder with Kuffar in condemning these beautiful operations and the Mujahedeen.

In particular, I'd like to address the scholars to whom Allah has given knowledge which they concealed and play with to please the Kuffar, to save themselves from their disapproval.

What a miserable deal. Pleasing the Kuffar all while just pleasing Allah. Fearing them instead of fearing Allah.

I would like to thank Allah for giving me this opportunity to bless me with this Shahada [martyrdom]. I ask Allah to forgive me for all my sins, to accept me as a martyr. I ask Allah to help the Mujahedeen everywhere in every way.

Umar Islam

THIS is revenge for the actions of the USA in the Muslim lands and their accomplices such as the British and the Jews.

This is a warning to the non-believers that if they do not leave our lands there are many more like us and many more like me ready to strike until the law of Allah is established on this earth.

Know that without doubt your dead are in the hellfire whilst the Muslims who died due to your attacks will be in paradise …

You are just sitting there, you are still funding the Army, you have not put down your leader, you have not pressured them enough.

Most of them are too busy watching Home And Away and EastEnders, complaining about the World Cup, drinking your alcohol, to care about anything.

That is all you seem to care about – and I know because I have come from that.

Waheed Zaman

I HAVE been educated to a high standard and, had it not been Allah had blessed me with this mission, I could have lived a life of ease; but instead chose to fight for the sake of Allah's Deen [his religion or way].

All of you so-called moderate Muslims, there's only one way to solve this crisis. The problems will not be solved by campaigning, big conferences, peaceful negotiations with the disbelievers.

The only solution to this current situation of the Muslims is by fighting Jihad for the sake of Allah until the enemy is fully subdued and expelled from our lands.

America and England have no cause for complaint for they are the ones who invaded and built bases in the land of the Muslims.

I have not been brainwashed.

I have been educated to a high standard. I am old enough to make my own decisions.

Tanvir Hussain

PEOPLE keep on saying, you know, that we keep on targeting innocent civilians, yeah.

We're not targeting innocent civilians. We're targeting economic and military targets.

They're the battle grounds of today, so whoever steps in these trenches, they, yeah, you haven't got us to blame.

You've got to blame yourself and collateral damage is going to be inevitable and people are going to die besides, you know, it's work at a price.

You know, I wanted to do this myself. For many years, you know, I dreamt of doing this, but I didn't have no chance of doing this. I didn't have any means.

Thank God Allah has accepted my duas [prayers], and provided a means to do this. You know, I only wish I could do this again, you know come back and do this again, and just do it again and again until people come to their senses and realise, you know, don't mess with the Muslims.

Two of those charged with conspiracy to murder did not make martyrdom videos.

Both are considered -- along with Abdulla Ahmed Ali -- the "ringleaders".

Assad Sarwar

Assad Sarwar didn't make a martyrdom video himself, according to the prosecution, because he didn't intend to die. He was allegedly getting ready to send seven martyrs and thousands of infidels to their deaths, but Sarwar wasn't ready for martyrdom yet. He had further plans.

The Scotsman again:

Prosecutor Peter Wright QC said one key figure obtained detailed information about other possible targets.

He said Assad Sarwar was too important to give up his life in the wave of mid-air suicide attacks.

Mr Wright said: "The horizon in respect of Mr Sarwar's terrorist ambition was, we say, limitless."

In addition to the alleged plot against transatlantic airliners, there were allegedly also other targets, as AFP reported:

Wright said a computer memory stick found at Sarwar's home suggested the gang had assessed other targets, including London's Canary Wharf tower -- the tallest in Britain -- a gas pipeline and a number of power stations.

Mohammed Gulzar

The eighth defendant on charges of conspiracy to murder is also pegged as one of the ringleaders, according to The Guardian, which reported:

[Wright] described Ali, Sarwar and Mohammed Gulzar as the main men behind the plot.

The Sunday Express has more:

Mr Wright said Abdulla Ahmed Ali from Walthamstow, Assad Sarwar and Mohammed Gulzar were the main men behind the murderous plot.
...

Mr Wright told the court police had watched several members of the gang for many months.

He said: “From what had been observed in the days and months prior to the arrests it was realised that these men, together with others, were engaged in some sort of terrorist plot.”

The court heard how Ali and Gulzar were watched by police as they met frequently at a flat in Forest Road, Walthamstow, to make final preparations.

About that flat: David Byers reported in The Times:

The “bomb factory” allegedly used by the eight-strong terrorist gang to develop liquid explosives, with the intention of blowing up transatlantic airliners, was described in court [April 4].

The flat in Forest Road, Walthamstow, East London, was bought by Abdulla Ali, the self-declared leader of the gang, for £141,191.63 in cash on July 20, 2006, the prosecution said...

Targets

The Sunday Express account continues:

Police recovered a computer memory stick belonging to Ali which contained detailed information about flights and airport security, the jury was told.

“The memory stick contained details in respect of flight timetables, baggage information, security advice in respect of restricted items and other information about Heathrow airport,” said Mr Wright.

The jury was shown files on the memory stick giving details of flights from Heathrow to cities in North America including Boston, Denver, Chicago, Miami, New York and Montreal.

The information included the airline, terminal at Heathrow, departure times, arrival times, flight numbers, aircraft type and number of stops, the court heard.

The information on the memory stick focused only on one-way flights from Heathrow. These were all commercial airliners with passenger capacities of almost 300 people per plane.

“Collectively the flights were each of them non-stop transatlantic journeys to north American destinations,” said Mr Wright.

Of the flights on the memory stick, seven had been highlighted, the jury was told. They were on three airlines - Air Canada, United Airlines and American Airlines.

The Guardian and others have named the seven highlighted flights:

1415 United Airlines Flight 931 to San Francisco
1500 Air Canada Flight 849 to Toronto
1515 Air Canada Flight 865 to Montreal
1540 United Airlines Flight 959 to Chicago
1620 United Airlines Flight 925 to Washington
1635 American Airlines Flight 139 to New York
1650 American Airlines Flight 91 to Chicago

The Toronto and Montreal connections are new and have aroused some interest in the Canadian media.

The CBC reported:

John O'Connor, a former commander with Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism unit, told CBC News Thursday that it's not surprising that Canadian flights were among the targets.

"It might seem difficult for Canadians to understand, but when you're looking at Canada and America, one tends to on this side of the Atlantic combine them as one, and I'm sure that's what the terrorists do," he said from London.

"They see them as very close cousins, and they wouldn't discriminate them against one or the other…. As far as the insurgents are concerned, any Western country which is an ally of the United States is going to be seen as a legitimate target."

~~~

thirty-third in a series

Inadequate Deception: The Impossible Plots Of The Terror War

Terror Games

Suppose you were running a counter-terrorism unit. What would you need? A huge budget -- obviously! But what else? You'd need lots of good people, and you'd need good ways to train them, and good ways to test them. You'd also need to make sure that they passed their tests.

If you were running a conventional military unit, you could do quite a bit of training and testing using relatively short war games. A war game is a simulated battle, with people from the same army (or its allies) playing both "sides". One side "attacks" and the other side "defends", and even though it's not exactly like a real battle, it can be an excellent learning tool. Some war games are designed to last a long time, but many are not, because you can do a lot of training, and a lot of testing, in a week, or even a weekend.

But the war on terror is a different kind of war, and it requires a different kind of war game. Instead of a series of battles, the war on terror involves complex surveillance operations lasting months -- or years. So a war game in the war on terror -- a "terror game" -- would be designed to last a while.

If you were planning a terror game, you wouldn't want your people playing bad guys for months at a time, if you could get somebody else to do it. Fortunately for you, it wouldn't be too hard to recruit some "bad guys" and give them a "plot" to work on. Then your people could watch them while you waited for -- or arranged -- a most opportune moment to "foil" "their" "plot".

In this way you could "pass" your "test", "prove" your "worth" and "justify" an enormous increase in your huge budget.

Knuckleheads And Cutouts

As in most endeavors, much depends on your people. For this job you'd need to avoid anybody bright enough to suspect you of scamming, so you'd be looking for knuckleheads. Fortunately, plenty of knuckleheads are available.

You couldn't do the recruiting directly. The knuckleheads you'd be looking for would never knowingly work for you. Instead you'd have to use a "cutout" to do the recruiting for you. But this wouldn't be a problem. And it would have some powerful advantages.

If the cutout did his job properly, the knuckleheads would never think anything was amiss. They wouldn't suspect they were dealing with a cutout, let alone working for you. And they certainly wouldn't know they were part of a terror game.

It would all be very serious business to them -- and rightly so, for the aftermath of a terror game isn't like that of a conventional war game, when the two "adversaries" get together for steaks and beers to compare notes and so on ...

The "bad guys" in a terror game won't be invited to any barbecues. They'll be arrested; incarcerated and possibly tortured; tried, and potentially convicted and sentenced to long prison terms. For them, it's not a game by any means.

There's enormous deception going on here, and if you were running it, you could set it up in a couple of different ways. You could use a single cutout, but he'd have to be a great actor because he would have to deceive all the knuckleheads all the time. Or you could use two cutouts, one of them deceiving the other, who then passes the messages on to all the rest. In this model, the cutout dealing with the knuckleheads is himself a knucklehead!

People are always more convincing when they believe what they're saying. So using a knucklehead as a "leader" of knuckleheads is almost always a good idea. It simply requires a second cutout.

The term "cutout" comes from covert operations. In a covert op, a cutout isolates the perpetrators from the planners. The perpetrators think they're working for the cutout; they don't know anything about the planners. So even if the perpetrators are captured, they can't implicate the people who are actually running the operation.

This is one of the ways in which covert operations stay covert. And most covert operations do stay covert long enough to be considered successful, if not forever. But if things go wrong and the perpetrators get captured, then the planners can protect themselves by eliminating the cutout (or cutouts).

Using multiple cutouts may seem overly complicated to you. But to any reasonably sophisticated covert agency, it's child's play.

The Plot

If you were running a counter-terrorism unit, and you decided to recruit some knuckleheads for a terror game, you would want to engage them in some tactical or logistical planning, but not in any strategic decision-making.

In this way you could retain overall control of the plot, by proxy through the cutout (or cutouts). And there are many ways in which you could use this control to your advantage. Above all, you'd want to make sure that, technically, the plot was well beyond the knuckleheads' ability to implement it.

You'd do this for two reasons. First, you wouldn't want to cause any damage. (You may be scamming here but you're not trying to hurt anybody. In fact your job is to make sure nobody gets hurt.) And it would be time-consuming and very expensive to watch all the knuckleheads all the time. So you'd need other ways to make sure that their plot would never amount to anything. And you could achieve this quite simply by making the plot impossible.

It would still have to be frightening, so it would have to seem possible, at least superficially. Otherwise no potential victims would be scared, and no potential knuckleheads would be interested.

So it would have to be at least semi-plausible. But it would also need a very serious core difficulty. And this difficulty would have to be kept as secret as possible.

Foiling The Plot

The second advantage of making the plot impossible is that it would take the knuckleheads forever to get anywhere with it. So you could let the plot "simmer" for as long as you liked, and "foil" it whenever it best suited you.

And this would also work to your advantage, because you could plan things. You could make a big deal of the bust. You could get some quotables to exaggerate the danger of the "catastrophic act of terror" that you and your crew had "prevented". And so on. In another walk of life this would be called making hay while the sun shines.

It would be perfect. You'd be a hero, and your budget and your power would be increased. Your boss would never say a word -- even if he suspected (even if he knew!) that you were scamming -- because he'd be a hero too, and his budget and his power would be increased as well.

So even if you didn't play your cards quite right, there'd be nobody with both the incentive and the ability to stop you.

Politics And Terror Since 9/11

In the years since September 11, 2001, it has often happened that a spectacular bust has been made at a key political time, and a big splash has been created over a semi-plausible narrative, while a core impossibility has been hidden.

Thus Shahawar Matin Siraj became New York City's "Subway Bomber" in August of 2004 after he was arrested for allegedly planning to bomb the Herald Square subway station.

Politically, the timing of the Siraj bust was extremely oppotune. In the summer of 2004, many New Yorkers were furious that the Republicans had chosen to party in the city they hadn't managed to protect three years earlier -- yet here they were, using the ruins of Manhattan as a backdrop for their festivities.

But the publicity generated by the arrest of "the subway bomber" turned things around -- for that convention and for a long time thereafter -- and instead of having to defend themselves against charges of incompetence or even complicity, the Republicans were suddenly able to scold the protesters: "See how much danger you're in? See how well our policies work? How dare you criticize?"

And this sudden shift happened despite the facts that Siraj had no bomb, no bomb-making materials, no knowledge of bomb-making, no independent access to any of the above, and no desire to hurt anyone.

It is said that Siraj was planning to blow up the subway during the Republican National Convention. Judging by the absence of bomb-making materials, that couldn't have been the case. The police just chose to arrest him right before the convention started, in order to maximize the publicity value of the bust (and to provide a pretext for their coming assault on those who did protest at the convention).

The "Liberty City Seven" have become similarly infamous for a plot that was similarly implausible. Homeless men from the Miami area who couldn't even afford boots were somehow going to get themselves to Chicago and bomb the Sears Tower? Fanciful at best, no?

The so-called "JFK Airport Bombing" plot was even less plausible -- some would say "even more impossible" -- because of the technical difficulties in what the plotters were allegedly planning to do. And the same characteristic also appears in many less-famous cases.

But the most outrageous foiled terror plot of all was a very famous one, in conjunction with which the most drastic security measures have been taken.

The Liquid Bombers

On August 9th and 10th, 2006, British authorities arrested 25 so-called "terrorists" who came to be known as the Liquid Bombers.

We were told they were planning to to destroy ten or twelve airplanes simultaneously by smuggling common household liquids aboard the planes and using them to make bombs, which they would then detonate, killing "hundreds of thousands of people" in a coordinated attack even more devastating than 9/11.

We were also told that even though the police had been watching the suspects for many months, they weren't sure they'd captured all the plotters, and that the 25 arrests had caused an increased risk of something or other. Extremely tight security arrangements were implemented, virtually shutting down Heathrow Airport for a while and banning such innocuous items as books!

Eleven of the 25 suspects have been charged with "conspiracy to murder", and another four have been charged with lesser offenses. All fifteen have said "not guilty"; their trial is expected to begin in late spring of 2008. The other ten alleged "terrorists" were released without charges.

Realistically, there's never been any increased threat of anything because of those 25 arrests, and the security arrangements were relaxed -- a bit -- after a while, but a very restrictive regime of airport security remains in place. And we can still fly, but we can't take a bottle of water with us, unless it holds no more than four ounces and is enclosed in a clear plastic zip-locked bag, along with our passport and, presumably, all our other vital documents.

Why must we do this? Are we afraid some terrorists are going to smuggle bomb-making ingredients aboard an airliner and mix them up and make a bomb and blow the plane out of the sky? Not at all! It can't happen! But if you got all your news from the papers and/or the TV, you might have no idea just how outrageous the "Liquid Bombers" plot was.

It's not just that they didn't have tickets, or reservations, or passports. These facts prove that the attack was not imminent, and lead some skeptics to question the timing of the bust, which in the political context seemed most opportune. Such questions tend to challenge the sudden increase in security that came along with news of the arrests.

But the timing is not the main point, in my analysis. Terrorists can get passports, they can buy tickets, and they can make reservations. So even if no attack was imminent, that doesn't mean the plot wasn't dangerous.

It's not a question of whether the danger was imminent or not, in my view. There was no danger -- ever! -- because the plot was impossible.

As with all the other implausible plots, the main difficulty is always hidden from the public. In this case, the hidden difficulty lies in the chemistry.

Mother Of Satan

It is definitely possible to make explosives out of household liquids. The simplest such explosive is TATP (tri-acetone tri-peroxide), which can be made from hydrogen peroxide, acetone and bleach. But it's not easy, nor is it quick.

If you wanted to make some TATP, you'd need good quality glassware, otherwise the impurities might cause a weak or premature explosion. And the ingredients themselves would have to be pure, otherwise you'd get the same result, a weak or premature explosion, or none at all.

If you're a suicide bomber, there's no point in killing yourself if you don't hurt anybody else. So you'd want to do it right: you'd want to get the purest ingredients you could find. You'd want to store them in the best glassware you could get. You'd want to do everything possible to protect the purity of these liquids, which would be vital to your plan of attack.

If you'd been studying your chemistry, you'd be ready to go once you got yourself and your liquids on the plane. But you'd wait until the plane was "safely" aloft. And then there would be no time to lose.

You'd mix the acetone and the peroxide first. From that point on, the reaction would generate a lot of heat, and you'd need to watch the temperature carefully. If it rose above 10C (50F) you'd be finished. So you'd need a thermometer -- and plenty of ice.

Having mixed the acetone and peroxide, you would then start adding the bleach -- one drop at a time -- while stirring constantly. Once all the bleach was added, you'd stop stirring and leave it alone for a while. Quite a while, actually.

The reaction takes at least 6 or 8 hours -- some sources say overnight, while others say 2-3 days. And the TATP -- the explosive compound produced by the reaction -- is a white crystal that must be filtered out, then rinsed and dried before it can be used.

They must have been hoping the transatlantic flight was going to be a long one. Only a very hopeful plotter -- or an utter knucklehead -- would imagine that there'd be enough time for all this, between London and New York.

Worse still, it would take a bathtub full of acetone, peroxide and bleach to make enough TATP to knock a hole in the fuselage of a commercial airliner. But that didn't stop the Liquid Bombers.

Lucozade

According to the official story, the "terrorists" were planning to disguise their bomb-making ingredients by adding dyes to make them look like Lucozade -- a popular British "sports drink" which comes in yellow, orange and red (or "citrus", "orange" and "fruit punch", if you prefer).

The plotters were going to make false bottoms for Lucozade bottles and dye their ingredients the same color as the drinks. Then they would fill the bottoms of the bottles with their color-matched bomb-making ingredients and the tops of the bottles with real Lucozade, or so we're told.

Then, presumably, if they were challenged while trying to bring the bottle onto the plane, they could drink from the tops of the bottles. And when they tipped the bottles upside-down and started drinking, the security guards would never notice that the bubbles rose only halfway up the bottles.

So the terrorists would get through the gates that way, and once they had boarded their planes and got themselves over the Atlantic, they were going to step into the restroom, mix their ingredients together, and come back out a minute later with a bomb. Or so we're told.

But what we are never told is crucial. Making such a bomb would take hours -- or days -- even if the ingredients were pure. And it wouldn't be possible at all if the ingredients were contaminated -- no matter how much time and space the terrorists were given on the plane, and no matter how many false-bottomed Lucozade bottles they were carrying.

Thus the "Liquid Bomber" plot wasn't just impossible. It was beyond impossible. And the natural next question is: Why? Who would recruit so many knuckleheads for a mission that was so thoroughly doomed?

Rashid Rauf

We were told that Rashid Rauf was the recruiter. Given the little we know about him, he would be the perfect man for the job.

Rashid Rauf was raised in Birmingham, UK, and moved to Pakistan in 2002, just after the fatal stabbing of his uncle. Shortly after he arrived in Pakistan, he married a very close relative of the founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed, so we are told.

J-e-M is a vicious terrorist group which likes to attack India and Kashmir, and which has made successful bombing attacks on Indian trains and train stations. J-e-M is also suspected in the London bombings of 7/7/2005.

Rashid Rauf is elsewhere described as affiliated with Lashkar-e-Toiba, another vicious Pakistani terrorist group, which has received open support from members of the Pakistani government, and which has also made successful attacks on India and Kashmir. L-e-T has recently gone underground in the face of the GWOT, only to re-appear as JUD.

In August of 2006, when the Liquid Bombers were arrested, we were told that Rashid Rauf was the mastermind, or the bomb-making expert, or maybe just the messenger. But no matter what his role was, he was always described as the link to al Qaeda.

Given his family connections in the UK (including his brother Tayib, who was one of those arrested and released without charges in August of 2006), plus his "street credibility" as a fugitive from British justice (and a potential killer), and his affiliation with various terrorist groups, Rashid Rauf had an admirable profile -- as a potential cutout.

It was Rashid Rauf's arrest in Pakistan that triggered the 25 arrests in Britain, according to the official tale, although the mechanism is unclear.

Some analysts think Rashid Rauf was tortured into giving up the names of the British plotters, who were promptly arrested; others say that when he was arrested he (or perhaps an accomplice) sent a text message to the plotters telling them to go ahead with their attack, and that this message was intercepted by the police. The questions may never be answered -- satisfactorily or otherwise.

There are many ways to eliminate a cutout. Rashid Rauf supposedly "escaped" from the Pakistani police, even though it's fairly clear that he was deliberately released. And we may never see him again.

Thus the cutout has been removed, and the trail from the knuckleheads to the planners has been cut. But if you could follow it, where would the severed trail lead? To J-e-M? L-e-T? al Qaeda? More than one of the above -- or even all three?

Here we can get profoundly confused, especially if we forget that J-e-M is tolerated and L-e-T openly supported by the military government of Pakistan, which itself doesn't like India very much. Both these banned terrorist groups are apparently protected by the Pakistani intelligence service ISI, which itself cooperates closely with Britain's MI6, as befits a virtual branch of the CIA.

You may recall Major General (Retired) Tanvir Hussain, who in the previous session served as Parliamentary Defense Secretary. Major Hussain raised a few eyebrows in a parliamentary debate when he said he had been a member of L-e-T. When he was asked for clarification, he didn't distance himself from the terrorists, nor did he claim that his association with them had ended. Instead the Parliamentary Defense Secretary of America's leading Asian ally in the Global War On Terror said that he speaks at L-e-T's conventions and admitted that he gives them other forms of assistance, too.

Don't be surprised if you haven't heard of this. Tanvir Hussain's statements were reported matter-of-factly in the Pakistani press, mentioned in a quizzical way by an Australian daily, and howled over by the Indian papers. But they were never reported anywhere else; no Western "news" outlet breathed a word of the story.

The connections between and among the various banned and/or state-sponsored terrorist groups are enough to make your head spin, and potential understanding of crucial issues can easily be lost on this very point.

In my view of the plot, and of the surrounding context, it doesn't really matter which -- or how many -- of these terrorist groups Rashid Rauf belongs to.

The confusion is irrelevant here, so the deception is ultimately inadequate. It's clear that the central and essential question looks like this:

Why?

Why would any terrorist group waste so much time and effort -- and sacrifice so many people -- trying to do something that's six kinds of impossible?

There's no question that J-e-M and L-e-T know how to make bombs. Hundreds -- thousands! -- of otherwise healthy people are now dead because of their bomb-making skills.

And we've been warned once or twice about al Qaeda and their sophisticated style of coordinated attacks, how they can bomb an embassy, or a warship, or a couple of office buildings and a military headquarters -- all on the same day!

So it seems only fair to ask: If they can do such things, why would any of these groups waste their time -- and their people -- trying to implement a plot that's beyond impossible?

And if you don't believe the world's most dangerous terrorists would knowingly waste their time and energy instigating plots that were doomed to fail, then you have to ask youself: Who would?

The answer to that question seems clear:

Suppose you were running a counter-terrorism unit...

~~~
thirty-first in a series

State Of Emergency Imminent In Pakistan?

Embattled President-General Pervez Musharraf is considering his options, and may soon declare a state of emergency, according to television and newspaper reports from Pakistan. The purpose of such a declaration would be obvious: to stifle dissent and perhaps allow Musharraf to retain his increasingly fragile hold on power. The pretext would be quite different, and could include clashes in the mountainous north-west following the siege and assault on Lal Masjid, a continuing wave of suicide attacks (which seem to be abating somewhat), and a purported threat from "Islamist extremists" which appears at this point to be heavily exaggerated.

As the AP reported,

During a state of emergency, the government can restrict the freedom to move, rally, engage in political activities or form groups as well as take a slew of other measures, including restricting the parliament's right to make laws and can even dissolve parliament.

Dissolution of parliament would be a major blunder, according to Musharraf's opponents. But he may not care very much what they think.

Earlier in the day, and much to the disappointment of his backers in America,

Musharraf abruptly announced he was canceling a planned trip to Kabul on Thursday to attend a U.S.-backed tribal peace council with Afghan President Hamid Karzai aimed at curtailing cross-border militancy by the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Musharraf's loyalties have almost always been a cause for concern, and it may suit him very well to miss the jirga.

On the other hand, he has plenty of problems to contend with in Islamabad.

One of Musharraf's worries at home is a Supreme Court hearing set for Thursday about a petition in which exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother are seeking to be allowed to return to Pakistan contest parliamentary elections due by early 2008. Sharif was ousted in 1999 in the coup that brought Musharraf to power.

Another former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, also figures into the story somehow. Musharraf has reportedly met with her in an effort to forge a power-sharing plan that would make her Prime Minister and leave him as President. But Bhutto has set conditions which Musharraf may find impossible to meet.

Musharraf tried to solve some of his domestic political problems in March when he suspended the Chief Justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who favors the country's constitution over its Gemeral-President, and seemed prepared to rule against Musharraf's intention to stand for re-election illegally as the army's chief of staff. But last month the Supreme Court reinstated the Chief Justice, so Musharraf still faces formidable obstacles in his quest to retain power. Worse yet for the President-General, Chaudhry's insistence that the charges against him were bogus, and his determination to regain his seat on the court, sparked a pro-democracy movement led by the country's lawyers, the rise of which has made Musharraf's position even more precarious than it already was.

The declaration, if it comes, may come very soon, according government insiders. As the AP report notes:

An aide to the president, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Musharraf was due to meet with Cabinet ministers, the attorney-general and leaders from the ruling party on Thursday to discuss whether an emergency should be declared.

He did not expect a declaration of an emergency in the early hours of Thursday.

Another senior government official, who also requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Musharraf had held several meetings Wednesday with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, legal experts and top figures of the ruling party and the leaking of possible emergency plans indicated that it was a serious option.

All this has been denied by the Information Minister, as Reuters reports:

State-run Pakistan Television quoted official sources as saying the reports were baseless and Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani denied to Reuters that a meeting had been held to discuss the imposition of an emergency, as rumours swept the country.

But Duranni's deputy sang a slightly different tune:

"Both internal and external threats are such that you cannot rule out anything. At the moment there is no emergency. We have said that options are available with the government," Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim Khan told Geo TV, one of the channels reporting that the measure would be announced soon.

In a related development, the Parliamentary Secretary for Defense, Major (Ret.) Tanvir Hussain Syed, has accused the CIA of murdering Chinese nationals in Pakistan in order to destabilize relations between Pakistan and China. The parliamentarian, who has previously admitted membership in the banned terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (aka LeT) (aka LT), also called for Pakistan to end its "love affair" with the USA and declare jihad against America.

"We should follow the path of Iran and that of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrullah to resist US manipulation," he urged.

LeT's stated goal is to bomb India (especially the trains and train stations) until the predominantly Hindu nation of more than a billion people becomes Islamic. And during a foreign policy debate on Wednesday, Tanvir Hussain

stressed the need for announcing a 'jihad' against India and the US.
...

Syed also asked the government to recognise the Taliban as a force in Afghanistan.

"Be it the mountains of Waziristan, Kashmir or the land of Punjab, there should be only one slogan 'Al-Jihad, Al-Jihad, Al-Jihad'," he said.

Pakistan, if you recall, is supposed to be the USA's number one Asian ally in the GWOT. With allies like these, who needs friends?

Alleged Liquid Bombers Plead 'Not Guilty'; Extradition Of Alleged Mastermind 'Conditionally Stalled'

The alleged plotters who were allegedly plotting to bomb intercontinental airliners headed from Great Britain to the USA -- the so-called "Liquid Bombers" -- have finally entered their pleas: not guilty! The accused were among 25 people arrested in the UK last August.

Rashid Rauf, the alleged mastermind of the alleged plot, was arrested in Pakistan shortly before the UK arrests, and his arrest was said to have triggered the arrests in Britain. Rauf is still imprisoned in Pakistan, and UK officials have apparently been trying to arrange for his extradition.

Although officials in both countries have repeatedly implied that an extradition deal is in the works, recent reports describe the extradition of Rashid Rauf as "conditionally stalled". It's as good a description as any.

Pakistan reportedly wants 8 Balochi nationals in return for Rauf, and routinely imposes the death penalty, so the British are reluctant to hand anyone over to the tender mercies of the Pakistanis. Meanwhile Rashid Rauf supposedly awaits trial in Pakistan, but his trial appears to be on indefinite hold. And the Pakistanis are saying that even if the Brits were willing to hand over the 8 Balochis, Rashid Rauf is not going anywhere until his trial is over. Or so the official story runs.

But there's an unreported subtext, an aspect of this case which has not just been unreported but actively suppressed: the alleged plot was so unlikely that it must be considered impossible.

The alleged plot, as described in breathless detail by US and UK officials such as Michael Chertoff and John Reid, involved attacks on as many as a dozen aircraft simultaneously, with the objective of killing "hundreds of thousands of people", as Chertoff said at the time.

We've been told that the plotters were planning to smuggle ordinary household liquids such as acetone and hydrogen peroxide onto airplanes, mix them together in the sinks of the airplanes' restrooms, and produce explosives capable of knocking all those planes out of the sky simultaneously.

But it didn't take much research to find out that the reaction which makes explosives out of acetone and hydrogen peroxide takes at least several hours (some sources say two or three days!) You'll forgive me if I don't link to any of the bomb-making recipes, especially since the FBI considers that a serious offense now, despite the fact that some of the most accurate bomb-making recipes reside on the FBI's own website. But let's not get bogged down in tricky administrative details!

Then a bit of math revealed that the quantity of explosive needed to puncture the fuselage of a plane is at least fifteen times as much as anyone could make in a tiny airplane sink. So, unless each of the accused plotters had fifteen or twenty accomplices -- who could all find sinks to work in without being detected -- there would be no way for a plotter to make enough explosives to take down a plane.

But at Heathrow, officials imposed strict security anyway, even after all the so-called plotters had been arrested. And airline passengers are bound by very strict rules to this day, supposedly to defeat the threat that the alleged liquid bombers allegedly posed.

But it's all a sham. It couldn't possibly be anything else. The only interesting question remaining is: What kind of a sham is it?

Either the Brits are lying about everything and there never was such a plot, or else there was a plot but it was impossible to pull off and therefore of little or no danger. Certainly there was no way any number of terrorists making bombs from acetone and peroxide could kill hundreds of thousands of people! There's really no way -- barring outrageous assistance from the flight crew -- that anyone could make a peroxide bomb on a plane at all.

Nonetheless, Rashid Rauf is still being held in Pakistan on multiple charges.

In addition to his terror-related charges, he's also accused of carrying forged identity papers. The terror charges were dropped in December, then reinstated, and his case was delayed because the police didn't file a charge sheet. Later when they did the paperwork, we learned that Rashid Rauf is accused of possessing 29 bottles of hydrogen peroxide for the purposes of terrorism. His trial -- off and on and off -- was scheduled to resume April 16th, but he hasn't appeared in court, then or since.

The nature of the mechanism whereby Rashid Rauf's 29 bottles of peroxide in Pakistan were supposed to be used in attacking airliners leaving Heathrow for the USA remains to be explained, as do the circumstances of his arrest, and the nature of the trigger whereby his arrest caused a wave of arrests in Britain. We've had a number of reports on these issues and they have differed greatly in ways that have never been explained, satisfactorily or otherwise. The entire case is strange from one end to the other.

It was widely reported that Rashid Rauf was the mastermind of the plot, although in some accounts he was described as the mastermind's assistant, and in other versions he was represented as merely a messenger. But he was always portrayed as the al-Q'aeda connection, for there never was any doubt that this alleged plot was the work of al-Q'aeda.

And perhaps because al-Q'aeda was established by the CIA through their friendly cutout, the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI), and Rashid Rauf is alleged to have ISI connections, it came as a surprise to see reports indicating that Rashid Rauf also had connections to the banned terrorist group JeM.

How and when was he arrested? Accounts differ. How was the news of his arrest connected with the arrests made in Britain? Accounts differ. Some say he was arrested a week before the others and tortured by the ISI until he revealed the names of those who were arrested in Britain.

Others say he was his arrest happened just before the others and was noted by an associate who sent a message to the alleged plotters in Britain -- telling them to go ahead with their plan! -- or that Rashid Rauf sent such a message himself. The "go" message would have come as a shock to the alleged plotters, since only one of them had any airline tickets, and some didn't even have passports. But it was allegedly intercepted by the British authorities, who had supposedly had all these people under surveillance for months, and this, we are told, was the reason for their arrest.

Having spent nine months arranging for the accused plotters to enter a plea, the swift British justice system now shifts into overdrive, with the trial scheduled to begin in April of 2008.

British authorities attribute the long pre-trial period to an abundance of evidence. But an enormous police search of the woods near where some of the suspects lived was called off in December, apparently because of the cost of the investigation (nearing 30 million pounds -- roughly $60M) and the apparent fact that they have apparently found very little -- if anything at all -- in their previous months of searching the woods.

For a recap on the accused, the charges and the pleas, here's the most recent report from the BBC (slightly edited for grammar and punctuation):

Accused deny airliner bomb plot

Twelve men accused of plotting to bring down an airliner with a bomb have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.

They denied charges of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause an explosion on an aircraft between January and August last year.

The defendants also denied other charges in an indictment which contained 27 counts.

They are due to face trial at Woolwich Crown Court in April 2008.

The accused were: Abdul Ahmed Ali, 26, from Walthamstow, east London; Assad Sarwar, 26, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire; Tanvir Hussain, 26, of Leyton, east London; Mohammed Gulzar, 25, of Barking, east London; Ibrahim Savant, 26, of Walthamstow; Arafat Waheed Khan, 26, of Walthamstow; Waheed Zaman, 22, of Walthamstow; Adam Khatib, 20, of Walthamstow; Umar Islam (also known as Brian Young), 29, of High Wycombe; Donald Douglas Stewart-Whyte, 20, of High Wycombe; Mohammed Shamin Uddin, 36, of Stoke Newington, north London and Nabeel Hussain, 23, of Chingford, east London.

Other charges

Additionally, Nabeel Hussain is accused of involved in the preparation of terrorism by meeting Mr Ali, having a will contemplating a violent death, and taking out a bank loan worth £25,000.

Mr Ali, Tanvir Hussain, Mr Savant, Mr Khan, Mr Khatib, Mr Islam and Mr Sarwar denied separate charges under the Explosives Substances Act.

Other charges on the indictment include possessing articles for use in terrorism.

A 13th man, Mohammed Usman Saddique, 25, of Walthamstow, will face a separate trial.

He denied being involved in the preparation of terrorism by owning a number of mobile phones as well as a CD containing titles such as Bombs And More.

Abdul Ali's wife, Cossor Ali, 25, will also face a trial on her own.

She denied failing to disclose information which could have prevented a terrorist act.

All of the accused, except Cossor Ali and Nabeel Hussain, who are on bail, appeared by video link from prison.

There's a bit of new information in this report, such as the fact that Mohammed Usman Saddique is in trouble because of the names of the tracks on a CD. But not much.

In other recent Liquid Bomber news, four British newspaper groups have agreed to pay substantial libel damages to Abdul Rauf for having falsely reported that he was detained for questioning over suspected involvement in the plot. Two of the papers had previously printed retractions and apologies. There was a similar report in the Turkish Press at the time, but there's been no correction or apology from Turkish media, let alone a libel settlement. Nor has there been any mention of the fact that Abdul Rauf is Rashid Rauf's father.

This is the second time British newspapers have made substantial payments over inaccuracies in their reporting. Amjad Sarwar was paid £170,000 in December after British papers falsely reported that he had been arrested in August along with the others. Amjad Sarwar's brother, Assad Sarwar, is one of the twelve facing "conspiracy to murder" charges.

It's tough not to speculate that the British media may be growing tired of huge libel suits and wondering how they could have been led so badly astray. And it's also tough not to speculate that the longer Rashid Rauf stays in Pakistan, the better it might be for UK authorities, who could be severely embarrassed by whatever he might say in a British courtroom. At this point it appears that the most incriminating thing he could say would be "Yes, I know the bombing plot was impossible, but I convinced all these aspirational jihadis to pretend they were planning to do it, so that you would have somebody to arrest when you needed to claim you'd made a major achievement and inject another jolt of fear into the bogus War on bogus Terror."

===

Sixteenth in a series.

Bombs On India-Pakistan 'Peace Train' Kill At Least 65

Here's some more really sick news from Asia. Hot on the heels of the story about the Pakistani courtroom bombing, we've got reports about bombs and fires on a train running from India to Pakistan. Yuccccckk!!

This report comes to us from Thailand's Bangkok Post: Terrorists kill 64 on India-Pak peace train

At least 64 people were killed after blasts triggered a fire on a "peace train" running between India and Pakistan in a northern Indian city on Monday, officials said.

Police said 18 other passengers were injured in two suspected improvised explosive device (IED) blasts after midnight on the coaches of the Samjhauta Express near the Panipat city, 100 kilometres north of Indian capital New Delhi.

"Sixty-four people including Pakistani nationals were killed. We found some explosives on the site. There were blasts and these were primarily to start a fire on the train to cause the deaths," India's junior Railway Minister R Velu told reporters.

Most of the passengers were killed due to burns and suffocation as the fire swept through two coaches while the train was heading to the border town of Attari from Delhi.

According to a report from (Canada's) CTV,

Because of security concerns, lower-class coaches on the train are kept sealed with locked doors and barred windows in the lower-class coaches on trips to the border. Passengers may have been trapped inside the burning cars.

How horrible! How many of us can even imagine that? How many of us even dare?

We return to the Bangkok Post for more details:

According to NDTV network there were identical fires in the two carriages and the coaches had been completely gutted in the suspected terrorist attack.

This is the first attack that targetted both Indian and Pakistani nationals.

As always, nothing is "known" about the perpetrators except their motives:

"The sabotage has been carried out by elements who are opposed to the peace process between India and Pakistan," said India's Railway Minister Lalu Yadav.

According to railway officials, it could have been a lot worse.

Senior railway officials said two suitcases containing IEDs were recovered from the blast site. Mobile phones or remote controlled devices could have been used to activate the IEDs, they said.

"Three IEDS have been defused in a controlled environment. The terrorists probably planned to carry out more blasts on the train," Y Mathur, a railway official said.

You probably won't hear about these sorts of details in the US media, nor may you care to, but:

The injured were rushed to a government-run hospital in Panipat. "I lost five of my children. There was smoke everywhere after the blast and everyone fell unconscious. Nobody survived," an unidentified witness told the NDTV.

The bodies were charred beyond recognition. "We cannot even say whether those killed were men or women as the bodies are in a bad shape. Only the post mortem will tell this," a senior police official told the IANS news agency.

Reports said several passengers including children and old people jumped out of the burning train as it was moving. Fire tenders were rushed to the spot but the fire was brought under control only after two hours.

As well as being an actual unprovoked attack against actual unarmed civilians, the attack carries symbolic meaning:

India and Pakistan started the Samjhauta Express, which links New Delhi with the Pakistani city of Lahore, and another train service the Thar Express to promote people-to-people contacts as part of peace talks they began in early 2004.

As you may recall, India and Pakistan have been squabbling for decades over Kashmir, they've fought three major wars, and terrorism has been a problem for both countries for a long time.

Allegations of cross-border terrorism (i.e. terrorists from Pakistan attacking India) have been bolstered of late, when Pakistani MP and Parilamentary Defense Minister Tanvir Hussain admitted in open debate that he was a member of a banned terrorist organization which is suspected of involvement in extremely violent attacks in India! (Regular readers of this page may recall this stunning news; those seeking more details should read "Tony Blair Makes a Donation -- to a Government including an International Terrorist".)

The Bangkok Post continues:

The incident came a day before Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri was scheduled to arrive in New Delhi for talks.

Kasuri is to chair the India-Pakistan joint commission along with his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee which is expected to review the peace process as well as discuss a newly-launched anti-terrorism mechanism.

Two toughts spring to mind right away: [1] there's nothing like a spectacular act of terror to derail international peace talks, and [2] whenever a spectacular act of terror does derail international peace talks, false flag warnings start going off in stereo!

Sometimes the terrorists who sabotage the peace talks are mortal enemies of the terrorists whose atrocities are responsible for the negotiations in the first place.

I'm not claiming that's what happened in this case; I am explicitly stating that I do not know. But these are the ideas that came to mind.

Latest: Reports from India indicate that another victim has died, and rail security has been stiffened in the wake of the attacks. As reported by the Hindu News Update Service,

Security personnel onboard various trains and at railways stations across Punjab were put on high alert today following the explosion on Delhi-Attari special train in Panipat in Haryana, which killed 65 people, including Pakistani nationals.

Various security agencies, including Punjab Police and the Railway Protection Force (RPF) have been asked to remain on maximum alert, Punjab police sources said.

They have been asked to be on the look out for suspicious objects and persons as part of attempts to check further incidents.

The checking in trains coming from Jammu has been ordered to be stepped up, the officer said.

A senior Punjab Police officer said here that they were also probing the blast in the Attari special train from Delhi which is the link train for the Lahore-bound Samjhauta Express.

Security in the Delhi-Lahore and Amritsar-Lahore buses was also being tightened.

At least 65 people were killed, some of them Pakistani nationals in explosions in the Attari special train. The train runs non-stop from Delhi to Attari where the passengers are shifted to the Samjhauta Express, which goes to Lahore after customs and immigration clearances.

As usual, I will keep an eye on developments for you and if I learn anything notable -- especially if I learn anything notable that's not likely to make it to the MSM -- I will keep you posted.

Tony Blair Makes a Donation -- to a Government including an International Terrorist

Tony Blair went to Pakistan last weekend with a quarter of a billion pounds in his back pocket and high hopes of making a trade, but from the look of things he only made a donation.

'Tis the spirit, one month early, perhaps?

Blair's meeting with ex-General (now-President) Pervez Musharraf was a great success for Musharraf, but not for Blair.

Blair's visit to Pakistan was apparently part of a concerted effort to break a deadlocked struggle for an extradition treaty.

The money -- a 250-million-pound increase for "moderate Islamic madrassas" (schools which teach Islam without violence!), raising Britain's contribution from 230 to 480 million pounds (almost a billion dollars) over the next three years, must have seemed to Blair a reasonable quid-pro-quo.

To shorten a long story somewhat, the moderate madrassas of Pakistan got the money, or at least the Pakistani government did, but Tony Blair didn't get the treaty.

Merry Christmas to the moderate madrassas of Pakistan.

Pakistan and the UK have been haggling over an extradition treaty for years, especially in the three months since August 10th, when the so-called "liquid bombers" were arrested (and their alleged plot to mix so-called explosives out of common household liquids aboard a moving airplane was reportedly foiled).

The arrests were said to have been triggered by the capture in Pakistan of one Rashid Rauf, alleged ringleader and/or messenger and/or explosives expert and most certainly the suspects' al-Q'aeda connection.

According to reports from Pakistan, after (or perhaps during) (or maybe even before) his arrest, Rashid Rauf (or possibly an associate of Rashid Rauf) supposedly sent out a text message allegedly giving the so-called plotters a "green signal".

Never mind that only one of the alleged plotters had bought an airline ticket.

Never mind that some of the alleged plotters still didn't even have passports.

Green! Green Green! Go! Go! Go!

Hop aboard transatlantic flights from Heathrow to The Great Satan, mix your liquid bombs along the way, and blow those planes out of the sky in the name of Allah!

So the alleged plotters either started getting this message and the British police feared they would start the attack rolling, or else British police feared they would get the message and start running away, but in any case the alleged plotters were arrested on the night of August 9th and the following day.

And all the airports (especially Heathrow) went on red-hot-alert, vigilant against liquids and pastes and suspicious murky substances in all carry-on luggage, despite some rather awkward circumstances.

For instance,the so-called conspirators had allegedly been caught, so what were we supposedly worried about?

And then: it takes several hours -- or maybe several days -- working in carefully controlled conditions, to make explosives out of common household liquids, and the process yields crystals which must be filtered and dried before they can be used.

No "terrorists" could possibly make a bomb aboard a plane without considerable assistance from the flight crew. And we know that's never going to happen. So what's the plot?

It has been suggested that the arrests were timed with politics in mind, and it would be tough to disagree, especially given the track record of our so-called governments with such events.

Despite this alleged plot having supposedly triggered so many changes in both North America and Europe, there has been very little discussion of the workings of the alleged plot itself.

One British official was especially helpful on this point when he declared that the police were certain they were investigating "an alleged plot".

This was a considerable point in his efforts to assure all the reporters that the authorites were actually responding to an actual "alleged plot", rather than something less or more sinister.

As for the alleged plot itself, the most recent detailed status report was published by the New York Times, which then decided not to ship any papers to Britain that day, and set up special software on their server to block British visitors from reading it online, unless they looked elsewhere.

Since that report, we've almost lost sight of the plot, winding up instead with half a dozen sub-plots, one of which involves Britain's suddenly-enhanced desire to negotiate an extradition treaty with Pakistan so that Blair and associates can get their hands on Rashid Rauf.

The Pakistanis seem to be doing the best they can to shield Rashid Rauf, short of simply saying, "You can't have him." Pakistani officials didn't even admit they were holding him on charges pertaining to the alleged liquid bombing plot until late in October.

Before that, they said he was being held on two charges, one related to altered travel documents and the other not related to terrorism! They've refused (or simply ignored) a request from Rashid Rauf's family to bring him to court, and they still haven't announced the specific charges under which he is being held.

And maybe they have a good reason for not doing so.

As Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed has pointed out, there's been precious little serious discussion of any of this in the British press during the past few months, and none of course on the American side, while airports all over the so-called free world now limit each passenger to a one-liter (1 qt) clear ziplocked plastic bag containing bottles and/or jars of no more than 100ml (3 oz) each.

It may seem extreme but it's better (for the passengers) than the red-hot-alert constraints, where passengers couldn't carry-on any liquid, cream or gel except for mother's milk, and then only if they had a baby with them and then only if the mother tasted the milk before boarding (to show the security guards it was really milk and not acetone or hydrogen peroxide or sulfuric acid!)

In one telling episode, William Blum wrote about a friend who had been prevented from carrying ice cream onto a plane, on the grounds that the ice cream might melt and become a liquid!

And even though Rashid Rauf's name hasn't appeared much in the western press, the Pakistani press has been mentioning him once a week or so, and with more or less the same story-line almost every week, buried amongst other news of the day:

A Pakistani official, asked about the status of extradition treaty negotiations and the prospects of Rashid Rauf being extradited, gives a more-or-less standard non-commital answer which somehow seems to imply that even though there's no extradition treaty, Rashid Rauf may soon be extradited.

And sometimes we see hints that a treaty is in the works or that his extradition is being considered. But so far nothing of the sort has happened.

Perhaps it's because of a lack of evidence?

Meanwhile, it's not just airport security that has changed. Authorities on both sides of the ocean have used the so-called plot to generate tremendous fear and to support a whole new wave of terror alerts, all of which have proved to be bogus or premature or overblown or all of the above.

And in the meantime, habeas corpus has been shredded in the US (not just for foreign terrorists but potentially for any law-abiding American), and Europe has been "harmonising security arrangements", slip-slidin' away to a place marked "continental police state".

So, for instance, there have been long lines and big delays at the airport in Cyprus because each passenger there is entitled to carry-on only a single one-liter clear ziplocked plastic bag containing an unlimited number of bottles and/or jars, each of no more than 100ml.

These restrictions, I must say, make it very difficult for "terrorists" to mix a bomb out of liquid explosives aboard a plane.

By my calculations, if you had...

a litre of the right liquids, in the right proportions, and sufficient ice (for the reactants must be kept cold),

enough glassware (lab-quality, unless you wish to blow yourself up prematurely without hurting anyone else),

enough time (at least six to eight hours, more likely three to four days),

proper ventilation (these are strong acids you're working with, and the smell of acetone is not exactly subtle),

and a proper filtering system (although an aircraft-quality serviette might do in a pinch -- at any rate this is the least of your technical problems),

...you could possibly create (now pay attention, because this is important!) up to eight grams (a quarter of an ounce) of explosive crystals!

(You'll excuse me, I hope, if I don't link to the bomb recipe from which I'm borrowing these numbers; I don't want to encourage anyone. I found a page whose owner was ecstatic over getting 8.3 grams of explosive crystals from a batch made in a one-litre flask, and since that was the largest yield I ever saw reported anywhere, 8 grams of crystals per batch seems like a generous estimate.)

According to experts in the field, if you had a shaped charge, properly packed, and properly placed, you could conceivably knock a hole in the fuselage of a commercial aircraft using only 250 grams (half a pound) of explosive crystals.

This means it could take as few as 32 passengers, all on the same flight, each carrying-on a litre of the right liquids, in the right proportions, each willing and able to find a separate private area in which to work undisturbed for at least six to eight hours, possibly three or four days.

They couldn't all work together, of course, because if they pooled their resources and mixed all their liquids together, somebody would probably notice -- and it would smack of conspiracy!

But if 32 passengers, acting independently, somehow fashioned a shaped charge containing roughly 250 grams of explosive crystals, without actually working together, it wouldn't really be a conspiracy, would it?

So they might -- just might! -- be able to pull it off. Be very afraid.

They would probably need only another 50 or 60 passengers in support, carrying-on the required glassware and ice (hopefully in insulated carry-on coolers).

In other words, it would only take about 80 or 90 terrorists, working together but separately for six or eight hours, or maybe three or four days, to bring down a commercial aircraft using a bomb made from explosive liquids.

As all can plainly see, the danger is certainly clear and present, the threat will obviously last at least a generation, and this is clearly a good enough reason to shred some fundamental legal rights, such as habeas corpus; we might as well legislate some immunity for war crimes already committed, while we're at it.

So ... that's the reason for the plastic bags, and all the little bottles and jars, and the warnings about how al-Q'aeda terrorists might revive the liquid bombing plan in order to wreak havoc on unsuspecting intercontinental travelers this holiday season.

And that's also why Tony Blair wants Rashid Rauf, but of course there's no extradition treaty between Pakistan and the UK, and that's why Tony Blair has just been visiting Pakistan looking for one. He hasn't been successful, not yet anyway.

But he may not need it right away, as British authorities have announced the trial of the alleged liquid bombers will not begin until 2008 -- probably not until after Easter. So Blair still has time to work on a deal before the "speedy" trial begins. It might cost him another billion, and then again he still might not get it; we can only wait and see.

If Tony Blair is wondering why he's been having so much trouble with Pakistan, supposedly a key ally in the war against terror, he might pause to consider what may have happened had he arrived in Pakistan three days earlier than he did.

Had he landed on Tuesday rather than Friday, he could have enjoyed reading about Tanvir Hussain, the retired Pakistani army major, now a member of the Pakistani parliament and in fact the parliamentary Secretary of Defense, who declared on that day in a parliamentary debate that he had been a member of the banned terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (aka LeT) (aka LT).

LeT is "the military wing of the Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI), an Islamic fundamentalist organisation which advocates a fully Islamic India, and whose military wing has been involved in bombing attacks against India since 1990", according to Wikipedia.

India and Pakistan have been at odds for a lifetime, having fought three wars against each other in the past sixty years. And they've just recently begun talking again after a horrific July 11 bombing attack against passenger trains in Mumbai.

LeT are suspected of involvement in those bombings, as well as many other large and extremely violent attacks, including the Delhi train bombings of October 29, 2005, and the London train bombings of July 7, 2005.

So this was probably a bad time for a Pakistani MP to say he had been a member of LeT.

Initially I got the impression he was saying he was a former member. But is that really what he meant when he said "I have been a member of LeT"? Is he a "former member"? Well, not quite.

According to more detailed accounts, published in India and Australia but not in Pakistan, Tanvir Hussain went on to explain that he is still associated with LeT, he goes to their conventions, he makes speeches for them there, and he gives them additional help when they ask for it.

He claims he's a jihadi, not a terrorist, and I don't think anyone can argue with him on this point, since everyone knows one man's terrorist is another man's jihadi.

Anyway, a Pakistani spokesman reportedly said we shouldn't worry about it, that we should focus "on what governments do and not on what individuals say". I'd find his advice easier to take if the individual in question were not part of the government, but nonetheless...

Plus c'est la meme chose, plus c'est la meme chose.

In other words, the status is still quo, for the most part. Tanvir Hussain is still an MP and the parliamentary secretary of defense. Nobody in Pakistan is screaming for his resignation, or even for a retraction. They probably just want him to stop talking.

In the global game of foot-in-mouth, John Kerry's got nothin' on Tanvir Hussain.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair still doesn't have an extradition treaty, and Rashid Rauf is still in Pakistan, looking more and more unlikely to face extradition. The only substantial difference is the money.

Tony Blair just gave Pervez Musharraf an additional 250 million pounds for what appears to be three more years of more of the same.

We're told we're at war against a network, not a country. We're told it's the elusive nature of the terrorist organizations -- networks of small and mostly independent "cells", with operational knowledge shared on a need-to-know basis -- that makes them so difficult to counter.

Without hinting at how closely this form of organization follows standard CIA tradecraft, I can't avoid mentioning that the way to trace connections in such a network is to "follow the money".

In this case the money -- an additional 250 million pounds sterling, nearly half a billion more dollars -- went from the government of a country which is said to be fighting terrorism, to the government of another country which is also said to be fighting terrorism, but whose parliamentary secretary of defense is closely affiliated with a notoriously violent terrorist -- oops! notoriously violent jihadi -- organization.

Does this implicate Tony Blair in international terrorism? Is the UK money-laundering hundreds of millions through Pakistan to known terrorists? Was it simply a misguidedly hoped-for deal that didn't quite work out? Or does Blair sincerely believe that giving millions of pounds to Pakistan to promote non-violent schooling will give him the edge in the phony war on phony terror?

Who can say? Tony Blair says we're finally fighting terrorism properly, so I guess we're bound to win sooner or later. Whatever that means.

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eighth in a series