The BBC is reporting this morning:
A plot to blow up planes in flight from the UK to the US and commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" has been disrupted, Scotland Yard has said.
It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft.
Police are searching premises after 21 people were arrested. Home Secretary John Reid said they believed the "main players" were accounted for.
High security is causing delays at all UK airports.
After 9/11, and especially after the heroic efforts of the passengers on United 93, I surmised that terrorists would no longer try to hijack aircraft. Now it seems that bombs are the weapon of choice, since you can't fight back against a bomb after it has exploded.
Although the British have very good airline security, I am not sure whether they swab luggage to look for traces of explosives. If they don't, I'm sure that they will start doing it now. And we can only hope that they will finally start to take the Muslim kooks living in London and elsewhere seriously -- and stop trying to blame Blair and Bush for terrorism. After the 7/7 London subway bombings, political correctness still ruled the public discourse, and British intellectuals appeared more afraid of Anglo "bigots" than they were of Islamofascists.
Despite what the naysayers claim, there will be "another 9/11." It's just a matter of time.
(A lot of updates in the extended section ...)
The usual roundup suspects:
Related stuff from Michelle Malkin (she posted these yesterday):
Update on the 11 missing Egyptian nationals loose in the US (three have been captured)
And Michelle Malkin asks if this recent BBC parody is funny now?
Fox News is reporting:
The suspects were "homegrown," though it was not immediately clear if they were all British citizens, said a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. Police were working closely with the South Asian community, the official said.
The official said the plotters intended to simultaneously target multiple planes bound for the United States.
"We think this was an extraordinarily serious plot and we are confident that we've prevented an attempt to commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale," Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson said.
... The plan involved airline passengers hiding masked explosives in carry-on luggage, the official said. "They were not yet sitting on an airplane," but were very close to traveling, the official said, calling the plot "the real deal."
The same report also reminds us:
In the mid-1990s, officials foiled a plan by terrorist mastermind Ramzi Youssef to blow up 12 Western jetliners simultaneously over the Pacific. The alleged plot involved improvised bombs using liquid hidden in contact lens solution containers.
And let's not forget "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, who tried to blow up American Airlines flight 63 in December 2001 with explosives hidden in his shoes.
Ace of Spades and Mary Katherine Ham wade through the moonbat fever swamps. You can be sure Karl Rove was responsible for this.
And here's another bit of news sure to make the moonbats go nuts. TIME Magazine is now reporting:
Britain's MI-5 intelligence service and Scotland Yard had been tracking the plot for several months, but only in the past two weeks had the plotters' planning begun to crystallize, senior U.S. officials tell TIME. In the two or three days before the arrests, the cell was going operational, and authorities were pressed into action. MI5 and Scotland Yard agents tracked the plotters from the ground, while a knowledgeable American official says U.S. intelligence provided London authorities with intercepts of the group's communications.
As I am typing this, I'm sure that some group of kooks somewhere is planning to fight for the release of these terror suspects because somebody didn't have the right kind of warrants.
More from the Financial Times:
British security officials suspected the innovative use of liquid explosives smuggled on board could have evaded airport detection devices. They said the method of attack, if used to blow up an aircraft over the ocean on a flight from the US to the UK, could potentially have been used repeatedly because its detection would have been all but impossible after the event.
One official said: “We were very lucky to have acquired the intelligence about the modus operandi of the attacks. If we hadn’t got the intelligence, they probably would have succeeded and there would have been little or no forensic evidence showing how they had done it. The modus operandi could have made waves of attacks feasible.”
And ABC News is reporting:
Three of the alleged ringleaders of the foiled airplane bomb plot have been identified by Western intelligence agencies involved in unraveling the plot. [Rashid Rauf, Mohammed al-Ghandra, and Ahmed al Khan - why is there always someone named Mohammed?]
Two of them are believed to have recently traveled to Pakistan and were later in receipt of money wired to them from Pakistan, reportedly to purchase tickets for the suicide bombers. (emphasis added)
But thanks to the New York Times the SWIFT program, which monitored bank transactions between suspected terrorists, is now of little value.
Listen, the fact is that we are still vulnerable. I highly suggest you all take proactive action and make sure you are prepared for any dangerous situation. By the way have you all seen the new Breath of Life emergency escape mask? The guys in my building got it and its awsome! It is pocket-size and weighs like an ounce and a half, and gives you time to escape to safety. Check it out at www.technonllc.com
Posted by: Mike | August 10, 2006 at 11:28 PM