Topic: What's your take on the alleged plot to bomb jets in Britain?

[Dunrobin]

I happened to see this poll on Strike-The-Root.com this morning.  I'm not going to vote or comment on this issue right away, as I'd lke to get your gut reactions to the question without any influence from me.  (Long time members are probably well aware of my beliefs and principles.)  I'm curious what the stooges on the street think.

So what's your take on this jet bombing plot in Britain?


NOTE: You can only vote once, and cannot change your vote.  Like I said, I want your "Gut reaction."

[Pilsner Panther]

In the immortal words of Daffy Duck, "Too obvious, too obvious."

The Bush Administration will shamelessly make political capital out of anything, as they've demonstrated over and over again. My "gut feeling" is that this plot wasn't related to either the U.S. or the British elections, but Karl Rove & Co. knew a golden PR opportunity when they saw it.

Why do you think they get paid so much—?

 

[sgt ladylove]

Actually, I don't like any of those answers.

I think the bombing attempt was legit, but I think that forces far beyond Bush and Blair are at work working people into a complete frenzy with every alleged or imagined attack upon us. 

We live during a time when people are willing to sacrifice their freedoms and rights for the sake of "security".  They are handing over control to people in a way that would have seemed appauling only 20 years ago.  Perhaps it was the rather dim-witted Bush who set the cogs in motion, but at this time there are people in government who are LOVIN' the increase in power they're getting, with the public's approval, if the illusion of complete chaos and terror is maintained.  And Bush has allowed this wheel to be kept in motion because it validates his policies as president.  In other words, I believe he's enabling it rather than being behind it all.

I'm not saying this at all in an anarchic way.  I, myself, have been in the military for almost 12 years.  I support our troops and wish them a speedy journey home.  However, I think our boss is both a manipulator as well as being easily manipulated through a lack of both education and common sense.

God help us all.

[Bangsmith]

Of course this is political capital! How else do you keep support for a war going? If it wasn't for this kind of bullshit propaganda, no one would have the heart to fight wars! I saw it first hand when I was in the Army just before the first Gulf War.("Motivated, motivated, hell yeah, motivated, Drill SearGENT!!") We weren't even allowed to read the newspaper for fear that it would us to question the war! The fully-ordained Catholic priest even tried to get us in the mood by emphatically working into his sermon, "You are trained to KILL!!!" at which everyone except me yelled back, "HOAHHHH!!!" and raised their fists! What does THAT remind you of?
Just think of how willing the average person, poor or rich, is to abandon principles for power of money, or even sex. Then think of how far the same person would take it if they HAD power and money! The more you get, the more you want. Both Anglo-Saxholes are willing to send innocent poor people to kill people they've never even meet before. Not a single American or Briton had any issue with a single Iraqi citizen. Osama the Clown and his band of merry woman-haters are the real problem! I think that Bush and Osama should have a fistfight to the death, and then be done with all this Holy slaughter!

[kinderscenen]

I hate seeing things as a conspiracy all the time, but damn!  With approval for the war at an all time low, what else is there to do but drum up business?  I haven't done much watching or reading of the news lately, simply because I am tired of seeing the same old footage of people throwing their drink bottles, hair gel, lotion, etc., in trash cans around the airport.  Just how were these items to be used to make a bomb? Just who were these terrorists that were set to destroy the freedoms that Americans and Britons enjoy?

I think this is all a ploy that even Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, etc., could be proud of--imagine if Hitler had created an enemy like these terrorists, he probably could've gone on to conquer the rest of the world instead of stupidly targeting a population within his own and surrounding countries.  You can't fight an enemy that looks like you, you need to fight one that has values that are contrary to those we call "normal."  No matter if we have to give up our rights--it's all for the good of the country!  I've heard it more times than I can count--well, if I have to give up some of my freedoms in order to be safe, I don't mind.  To be safe from what? How in the hell can you win against people who aren't afraid to die for what they believe in?  How can you be safe from a dirty bomb attack in the subway or on a bus?  Or in a college auditorium?  I think that there's been too much emphasis on planes and the terrorists are most likely widening their options. 

Gah! I've ranted enough--not much angries up my blood, but when I see people handing over their freedom and privacy all willy-nilly, it makes me wonder...just how easy it could be to have another charismatic leader (or someone behind the scenes) to pull the strings and do whatever they wanted.

[Bruckman]

Dick Cheney was here in Montana yesterday, speaking at a fundraiser for the re-election of Sen. Conrad Burns. (Burns was implicated in the Abramoff scandal as one of those who had his hand out for payoffs; after initially denying he'd accepted any $ from Abramoff and his co-lobbyists and expending $ on TV ads claiming innocence, Burns was forced to recant and ended up donating the $ he'd received - which he'd already spent - to charity. He also has proven ties to big oil, not surprising in a state like MT which has oil reserves).

Anyway, Cheney was stating how his party has improved the security of the nation and is continuing to work on its improvement. Cheney, as a believer in centralized gov't's "right" to enforce security, is hardly an unbiased person when it comes to determining his party's role in balancing freedom vs. security. As Sgt. Ladylove observed, it's a golden moment for politicos to claim how the system is working to preserve our safety. It hardly seems to matter to the same politicos that their claims are severely compromised by their own undiluted self-interests. What's worse, every such "victory" is trumped up into a reason for a further increase in security measures and a corresponding loss of personal liberty.

I could accept this if some sort of timeframe was involved - I don't mean an actual calendar, but if I knew my liberties were being suspended until a certain objective was reached (military or political) I could at least look forward to a resumption of the freedoms I formerly enjoyed. Unfortunately, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the other advocates in strong centralized gov't see these measures as in no way reducible - they aren't "war measures" but standard procedure intended to stand for all time. There is nothing new about the measures they've put in place - every wartime gov't has had them - but we're being asked to maintain them indefinitely, without even a real declaration of war or any timeframe for its objectives to be met. The "freedom" of Iraq was a political, not a military, objective. But our C in C has no conception that the two aren't the same thing - a grave error.

You know, I could live w/a wartime situation - rationing, price controls and the rest - which we currently don't have - and which prevented, during WWII, a steep increase in the prices of commodities (although when price ceilings were removed post-1946, there was a period of inflation). But the strong centralized gov't doesn't have the balls to impose these - it has to keep up the bread and circuses necessary to distract the average citizen from what's really being eroded - personal liberty - and which this gov't has no intention of giving back.

Oh, and in case anyone has any doubt: I find the idea of $250-a-plate luncheons for sitting VPs in a "wartime" situation morally odious.

[Bruckman]

Of course this is political capital! How else do you keep support for a war going? If it wasn't for this kind of bullshit propaganda, no one would have the heart to fight wars! I saw it first hand when I was in the Army just before the first Gulf War.("Motivated, motivated, hell yeah, motivated, Drill SearGENT!!") We weren't even allowed to read the newspaper for fear that it would us to question the war! The fully-ordained Catholic priest even tried to get us in the mood by emphatically working into his sermon, "You are trained to KILL!!!" at which everyone except me yelled back, "HOAHHHH!!!" and raised their fists! What does THAT remind you of?

A scene from JARHEAD.

I understand "motivation" too, having had to get jacked up for fights when I was a boxer. (And the difficulty in coming back down afterwards). Unfortunately, the indefinite extension of this conflict means it'll be harder and harder for big gov't to back off the level of control it already has. More likely, it'll become bloated with self-importance like a pug who's so brain-damaged he can't recognize the difference between being inside the ring and outside of it.

Punch-Drunk Government: how's that for a descriptive title?

[JazzBill]

There are BAD people out there, who want to do BAD things to America. You can be sure of that.
I believe there was going to be an attempt to knock some planes out of the sky. Do you think those terrorists are just sitting around on their asses and not thinking of ways to get at us ? There are too many people involved, Pakistan, Great Britain, and the U.S, for this to be some kind of a political hoax. But, that being said, I also believe that all of the media people and politicians are spinning this to what their agenda is.

[Pilsner Panther]

Punch-Drunk Government: how's that for a descriptive title?

Very appropriate, since it's certainly lost its "bal-ance!"

[Pilsner Panther]

There are BAD people out there, who want to do BAD things to America. You can be sure of that.
I believe there was going to be an attempt to knock some planes out of the sky. Do you think those terrorists are just sitting around on their asses and not thinking of ways to get at us ? There are too many people involved, Pakistan, Great Britain, and the U.S, for this to be some kind of a political hoax. But, that being said, I also believe that all of the media people and politicians are spinning this to what their agenda is.

As a sometime media person myself, I think you're going way too far in tarring all of us with the same brush. Having known quite a lot of news professionals, going all the way back to my own college journalism classes, I can say with confidence that the average line reporter is an honest, hard-working individual who just wants to cover the story and get the facts out.

Where you generally find the "spin" is on the op-ed page, where it belongs; and if some people are so dense that they take op-ed pieces as statements of fact, that's hardly the writers' fault. I've never personally made an unsubstantiated statement in an op-ed article, but not everyone who writes them has those kind of standards.

Yes, some news organizations (such as Fox), do have political agendas, but they don't make much of an effort to hide it, after all. If you really want to get a balanced picture of national and world events, you should follow the foreign press in addition to the domestic. I have the BBC, the Times of London, the Guardian, and Reuters all bookmarked, and I also look in on mainland European and Asian news sources now and again.

As to what the terrorists will do next, I have a strong gut feeling that unless we're extremely vigilant and/or lucky, there will be another successful attack of 9/11 proportions, at some point. They've lost the element of surprise with aircraft and trains, but there are many, many other ways to kill large numbers of innocent people. These bastards are evil, but they're certainly not stupid— in fact, they've shown themselves to be quite creative.

[JazzBill]

The media I was referring to was indeed the television news media. Right next to my computer I have a television that is usually turned on to CNN, Fox, or MSNBC. All of them are very well rehearsed in spinning their agenda. But do we at least agree that it is possible that something was in the planning stages for another airplane attack, or do you think this was all just some big hoax? It seems to me these terrorists have always liked to mess with airplaines. They hi-jacked them, and we figured out how to stop that. They blew them up in the air, so we tightened up security. They used them as guided missiles, and we tightened security some more and put a stop to that.  My point being , why would they stop using airplanes when it has been such an effective weapon for them?

[Pilsner Panther]

The media I was referring to was indeed the television news media. Right next to my computer I have a television that is usually turned on to CNN, Fox, or MSNBC. All of them are very well rehearsed in spinning their agenda. But do we at least agree that it is possible that something was in the planning stages for another airplane attack, or do you think this was all just some big hoax?

No, Bill, it was certainly no hoax. It has all the earmarks of a genuine plot that came very close to being carried out— when these terrorists were caught by the British authorities, they were in the final "dry run" stage before the main event. Unlike our own intelligence agencies, MI5 seems to know what it's doing.

It seems to me these terrorists have always liked to mess with airplaines. They hi-jacked them, and we figured out how to stop that. They blew them up in the air, so we tightened up security. They used them as guided missiles, and we tightened security some more and put a stop to that.  My point being , why would they stop using airplanes when it has been such an effective weapon for them?

They'll stop as of this last bust, because, as I said, they've lost the element of surprise. Airports here in California now have uniformed National Guard troops walking around in addition to all the other security, and a friend of mine who was in New York City recently told me that he'd never seen such a strong police presence there in his life. Quote, "It seemed like there was a cop on every corner."

However, there are other ways to do serious damage to the American population and infrastucture— I can think of more than a few myself, but I'm not going to say what they are, because you never know just who might be looking at a website. If there's one thing that I don't want to do, it's to give these S.O.B.'s any nasty ideas that they haven't already had themselves.

[Bruckman]

Anyone who logs as many miles on road trips (business or pleasure) can see umpteen ways a panic might be started. Better not to go into specifics.

Oh, and I owe our VP Dick Cheney an apology. In my post of yest. I opined that $250 a plate luncheons for sitting VPs during wartime was morally odious. I must retract that. The $250-a-plate went to Sen. Burns' re-election fund. Cheney, on the other hand, charged $2100.00 for having a photo taken w/him. No doubt those involved will write it off their taxes, too, after stating, as Cheney did, how much our nation owed those who maintained its security and strength.

Is that the kind of gov't I enjoy living under - when my only chance at access to a leading politico is to pony up a few grand?

Will stop - I've been doing well keeping my blood pressure down (it was 180/104 a year ago) and don't want to jeopardize these good results - the idea of a sitting VP accepting $2100 for a photo-op in "wartime" is heinous.

[larry]

This allegedly narrowly averted terror attack makes as much sense as all the rest of their BS.  First of all, it would be completely impossible to mix a triacetone triperoxide (that's what they said it was) bomb by passengers on an airplane. Then they tell us they are so afraid of people bringing liquids on board planes and mixing them together to make a bomb, right - so they have  Kammissar Chertoff's KGB agents at the airports confiscating all the liquid they can find, and what are they doing with it? Why, they are tossing it all together in a big barrel, spilling it all together in there, mixing it up, all together. Here's a photo:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v670/Desert_Easy/130806liquids2.jpg

See, they have forced the passengers to spill all their liquids - all together - because they're - uh - afraid of liquids getting mixed together, see.

Don't get me started.