gdburner,
I see, so it is not "the Jews" that the "radical muslim extremists" hate - it's us right? Then what has all this nonsense been about the "arab world" wanting to wipe out "the jews" and the State of Israel? Now which is it? Us? Or the "Jews"? Or both?
What have Al Kidya been doing for the last 3 years and 10 months? Well, I could could make a parallel observation here; Al Kidya has made about as much effort to hit the million and a half soft targets sitting like ducks here in the CONUS - as George Bush has done to seal our borders and get them all out. In other words - about nothing.
In the meantime, the administration spokespeople have been winding people up with terms like "chatter" - as if to bring a few cities into chaos and kill a few thousand people Al Kidya has to "get all worked up and talk about it" on telephones, e-mail and other interceptible systems before they can inflict the sort of carnage and disruption that a team of college students could figure out.
This government propaganda build-up and priming using tabloid language and phrases reminds me of the audio and visual cues in the typical Hollywood film made for people that have the intellect and attention span of a 3 minute pop single. Like the oversize pressure gauge with the red zone and the word "danger" in huge block letters.
I guess Al Kidya has spent the last 3 years and 10 months in Las Vegas having too good a time to do anything else.
The "war" with the "IRA" is an arms, drug and money-laundering business. The British gov has admitted that it's own agents have been directly involved in some of the murders and other activities. In 1991 there were six people acquitted of two pub bombings in Birmingham after spending 16 years in prison after being scapegoated by the British government.
That particular bombing killed 21 people in two pubs. Another device at a bank didn't go off. But that was the largest "IRA" attack on the British mainland in the whole history of the "IRA". Some "war" eh?
I lived near a British military base for a considerable time during the 70s and 80s when this stuff was going on. It was an open base, no entry control, and another sitting duck. I can also tell you for a fact, that the regional British police HQ in those days had uncontrolled entry into the complex, no armed police whatsoever, and was also a sitting duck that sat there day and night for several decades. This would have been duplicated in every region in the country with the possible exception of some of the major operation centers in London, Birmingham, Liverpool etc. This was no "secret", it was common knowledge - a literal joke. There were no armed police patrols in Britain at that time. None. Not one. This less than an hours drive from one, and a couple of hours from several inbound ports from Ireland in a coastal area that had enough inshore and offshore fishing boats afloat to put a daisy chain across the Irish sea and back.
These, and I could write a list just of catagories let alone individual subjects, were all untouched. A couple of bombs here and there and that was IT. For thirty years. From any rational standpoint it has been evident that this was no "war", but rather a controlled conflict.
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