Web chatroom gang: more War on Terror hype?

[LuckyTheDog]

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/No_Plot_for_NYC_Just_Hate_0707.html

Can't we catch some REAL terrorists? Or just more nuts with no money and no ability to carry out their fantasies? I guess they have to keep finding bogeymen if they want to keep expanding executive power and ignoring the law. But, the Internet chatroom pair were hardly more of a threat than the Miami Seven.

It irks me that the Bush Gang is trying to score propaganda points by hyping these things. But what irks me more is how readily people buy into this crap.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Finding the bad guys could be as simple as checking your

personal phone book, bills of sale for armaments, and email lists from days gone by.


http://www.counterpunch.org/gibbs04072003.html

it was the CIA's favorite coup. "We really had the t's crossed on what was happening," James Critchfield, then head of the CIA in the Middle East told us. "We regarded it as a great victory." Iraqi participants later confirmed American involvement. "We came to power on a CIA train," admitted Ali Saleh Sa'adi, the Baath Party general secretary, who was about to institute an unprecedented reign of terror.13

Former National Security Council staffer Roger Morris also notes CIA complicity in the Baath Party's earliest acts of violence in 1963: "Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the CIA, the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers."14 The takeover led to the rapid assent of Hussein himself, who seized full power in a later coup.

A significant number of the enemies the United States now faces constitute "blowback" (as Chalmers Johnson has argued) from past CIA operations. Osama bin Laden was according to Le Monde "recruited by the CIA in 1979" to assist in the Jihad against communism in Afghanistan. During the 1980s, Bin Laden worked along the Pakistani frontier with Afghanistan, where he helped funnel aid to the Mujahiddin guerrillas who were battling the Soviets and Afghan communists. Jane's Intelligence Review notes that Bin Laden "worked in close association with U.S. agents." Bin Laden also is known to have worked closely with Gulbadin Hekmatyar, who as also the CIA's most favored Mujahiddin commander. In raising money for the guerrillas, Bin Laden used the Bank for Credit and Commerce International--which was also the bank that the CIA used to finance many of its covert operations.15

[LuckyTheDog]

2. Here is what I fear

I fear that the "war on terror" is much, much more about grabbing power than it is about finding terrorists.

[NYC]

3. Read this thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2378054&mesg_id=2378054

[LuckyTheDog]

5. Good points there, thanks (nt)

[CJCRANE]

4. "In sum

the plot, if that is what we would call it, was not well conceived, and there was no possibility of flooding Wall Street," Giraldi added. "There was no connection to a cell in the US. Finally, professional terrorists generally do not discuss targeting on open channels. As it was being monitored from the beginning of the open discussion, there was little chance anything concrete would have developed."

[allemand]

6. Actually, Assem Hammoud was a real terrorist with links to other real

terrorists in Lebanon. He was about to travel to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan when he was arrested. He had also applied for a tourist visa at the Canadian embassy in Beirut:

Bomb plotters 'eyed several US targets'
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/bomb-plotters-eyed-several-us-targets/2006/07/09/1152383611518.html

Peter Bergen also thinks that Hammoud was a greater threat than the Miami Seven:

"If you look at the Miami case, where they're basically terrorist wanna-bes, I think this was more than the Miami case. These guys were planning to go to Pakistan for training. They were discussing this plan. Was it a really big deal? You know, I don't think so. But was it worth stopping it? Of course."
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0607/09/le.01.html

[LuckyTheDog]

7. Rolling Stone's take on this

http://www.rollingstone.com/nationalaffairs/?p=255

New information has come to light on the curious timing of yesterday’s leak of the Holland Tunnel/PATH Train terror plot, and credible intelligence sources are casting doubt on the seriousness of the threat.

Begging the question, ‘Why did we just hear about this yesterday?’, ABC’s blog, The Blotter reports that the alleged ringleader Assem Hammoud, a.k.a. Amir Andalousi, has been in captivity for nearly three months:

Lebanese officials arrested him in April at the request of the FBI.

Meanwhile, although the assistant director of the FBI insists that this plot was “the real deal,” CBS’s blog, The Public Eye, is skeptical:

Frightening? Sure. “Serious?” Well, the jury is still out. The “largely aspirational” plot never went beyond e-mails, there was no credible link to Al Qaeda, and there was no specific mention of the Holland Tunnel, just the mass transit system more generally; additionally, sources say “no one in the United States ever took part in the Internet conversations and…no one ever purchased any explosives or scouted the transit system.”

[allemand]

8. Well, Assem Hammoud does have a "credible link to Al Qaeda":

"The security officials told Newsday that Hammoud had contact with at least two of 13 men who were arrested by Lebanese authorities in December for belonging to al-Qaida and planning attacks from Lebanon. The officials said Hammoud was in touch with Hassan Nabaat, a Lebanese, and Hany Shanti, who has both Lebanese and Jordanian nationalities. But Lebanese officials have provided few details about those arrested, their relationship to al-Qaida and what attacks they were plotting."
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-woterr094811704jul09,0,6879126.story?coll=ny-worldnews-print

Hani Hachem al-Chanti (also "Hani Al-Shatti") and Hassan Mohammad Nabaa (also "Hassan Muhammad Nab’a") were both members of an al-Qaeda cell in Lebanon. Hassan Nabaa has even been described as the "Emir" of that group.