Category: Asia Pacific

Is it possible the 7/7 bombings didn’t get through to some Londoners? Is it really possible that yesterday’s attack was insufficient to make clear the actuality of the war? Apparently so, as there are still some who refuse to face it today, even after a dramatic chase and shooting on the Underground.

Police Shooting Startles and Worries Londoners

It was around 10 a.m. on a sunny, summery Friday when London crossed a once-unthinkable line in its unfolding war on terror.

In a city where most police officers do not carry guns, the shock from the shooting death of a man in a subway car was palpable. It raised questions about police firearms practices, kindled uncertainty among Muslims and deepened the anxiety of a city that looks, these days, under siege.

The police said they had trailed a man, described as South Asian in appearance, from a house in Stockwell that they had under surveillance. He was clad in bulky clothes on a warm summer day, witnesses said.

He vaulted over a turnstile and dashed onto a train, with plainclothes police officers right behind him. The police said the man did not obey orders to stop, so the officers shouted at the passengers to get down and take cover.

The man stumbled onto a train, and a passenger, Mark Whitby, told the BBC: “I looked at his face. He looked sort of left and right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified, and then he sort of tripped, but they were hotly pursuing him.”

The officers “couldn’t have been any more than two or three feet behind him at this time,” Mr. Whitby said, “and he half tripped and was half pushed to the floor, and the policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand.”

The officer with the gun “held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him,” Mr. Whitby said.

The gunshots reverberated much further than the grimy confines of Stockwell station, in a hardscrabble neighborhood of south London. It was the first such shooting in memory. Between 1997 and September 2004, the police opened fire on 20 occasions, killing 7 people and wounding 11, according to the Metropolitan Police. The statistics do not specify where the shootings took place.

Although most London police officers are unarmed, since 9/11 Londoners have grown used to seeing special armed units, who have been given antiterrorism training.

Police rules require officers to give warning if they intend to open fire and to “ensure that their responses are proportionate and appropriate in the circumstances and consistent with the legitimate objective to be achieved.” Officers are supposed to aim for immobilizing body-shots, but television reports said Friday that shoot-to-kill shots had been authorized to prevent suicide bombings.

Even as Londoners absorbed the news of the shooting, a debate unfolded whether it was justified.

Justified? Check the circumstances, check the attire, check the weather. Then ask the Israelis if they have any experience with unusual attire and things going kaboom. Justified? Oh hell yes. Unfortunate? Yes, as well. I’d much rather have this piece of trash in custody spilling his guts than in the Tube spilling his blood. Still, I’ll settle for the blood.

The article from this point on consists mainly of a back and forth as Londoners chimed in on the developments. I’d like to highlight a few and leave the rest of the article for y’all to peruse. I’ll then turn to a few other pieces of news.
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Not in too much of a mood for blogging tonight, so how about link dumpalooza on the war against Islamist terror?

Let’s start with what, in my view, is the most disgusting story of the day.

Suicide bomber kills 18 Iraqi kids

Tiny plastic sandals, some tattered and stained with blood, lay in a pile near a child’s crushed bicycle. Mothers wailed and beat themselves after a suicide bomber killed 18 children and teenagers getting candy and toys from American soldiers.

One of the soldiers was among the up to 27 people killed in Wednesday’s blast in an impoverished Shiite Muslim neighborhood. At least 70 other people, including three U.S. soldiers, were wounded. A newborn was among those hurt.

[…]

“There were some American troops blocking the highway when a U.S. Humvee came near a gathering of children,” said Karim Shukir, 42. The troops began handing out candy and smiley-face key chains.

“Suddenly, a speeding car bomb…struck both the Humvee and the children,” Shukir said.

Americans give chocolate. Islamists give death. Tell me this is not a war that needs to be fought.

Australia to redeploy troops to Afghanistan

Australian Prime Minister on Wednesday announced that Australia will send 150 troops to Afghanistan at the request of the United States, Afghanistan and others to combat the regrouping of Taliban and al-Qaeda networks.

The troops, comprising SAS (Special Air Services) soldiers, commandos and logistic support, will be deployed in September, when parliamentary elections will be held in the war-ravaged country.

The fresh troops will stay there for 12 months working with the US troops.

[…]

Australia sent 1,500 strong troops to Afghanistan in 2001 but withdrew all the troops in 2002. There is only one Australian engineer being engaged in mine clearance in the Asian country at present.

Welcome back, blokes. As an aside, I’ve always held the Aussie spirit in very high regard.

Labor alarmed by PM’s talk of terror attack

Labor’s foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd is alarmed by Prime Minister John Howard’s comments that the possibility of suicide bombing attacks in Australia like those seen last week in London cannot be ruled out.

Mr Howard says he does not believe the Government’s decision to redeploy soldiers to Afghanistan will make Australia more of a target but says he cannot count out the possibility of an attack here.

“We shouldn’t complacently imagine that there aren’t potentially suicide bombers in this country,” Mr Howard said.

Mr Rudd says if Mr Howard has intelligence about potential threats he should make it public.

“If you have have no intelligence that there are suicide bombers in Australia, then make that plain to the Australian people as well,” he said.

Mr. Rudd, I have some relevant intelligence for you: there are people out there that would love to kill you. And me. And any infidel they can touch with their knives or shred with their bombs.

British Police Search for Mastermind of Blasts

Britain said today that it was hunting the mastermind of the terror attacks here last week, and the British Home Secretary offered the first official indication that officials believe the four attackers were suicide bombers who “blew themselves up” in the blasts.

The police said late today that officers had raided a home in Buckinghamshire, around 40 miles northwest of London and close to Luton, where police seized a car laden with explosives one day earlier. Police officials declined to give further details or to say whether the raid, conducted under anti-terrorism laws, was against the home of a fifth suspect.

The four coordinated mass-transit bombings last Thursday confronted Britons with the very scenario they feared most – an attack by British-born terrorists drawn from the ranks of disaffected Muslims and seeming to copy the grim tactics of assailants in Israel or Iraq that most Britons see only on their television screens.

Make no mistake — suicide bombers will find there way to many more western countries. The London attacks underscore the dire situation many European nations must soon face, that of large pockets of isolated, unassimilated Moslem immigrants that are fertile breeding grounds for radicalism and violence.

Pakistan ‘thwarted’ UK pre-poll plot

Pakistan helped Britain avert a terrorist attack ahead of the general election in May by alerting officials to a potential plot, the Pakistani interior minister said on Wednesday.

Aftab Khan Sherpao said that information shared by Pakistan with Britain led to arrests in various countries, including Pakistan, and that the plot was “aborted”.

“Before the general elections in the UK we had received reports that [a terrorist attack] may arise before the elections, and that was aborted because of the information provided by the government of Pakistan,” Mr Sherpao told reporters in Islamabad.

This story, along with the recent bombings, show the flawed concept of treating this war exclusively as a criminal matter, even with large cooperation from the international community. Law enforcement and intelligence has to be perfect or blood flows. That is the reason why such a strategy must be coupled with something more. Currently, that something more is trying to provide an alternative to the radical culture by building a viable, democratic Iraq. If that fails, the alternative strategy may eventually have to be far bloodier.

Italy convicts 2 on terror charges

An Italian judge on Wednesday convicted two North Africans of belonging to an extremist cell alleged to have planned attacks in Italy, including one against Milan’s subway.

Judge Silvia Milesi sentenced the defendants — Moroccan Mohamed Rafik and Tunisian Kamel Hamraoui — to up to four years and eight months in prison, a defense lawyer said.

A third suspect, Tunisian Najib Rouass, was sentenced to one year and two months in prison on the lesser charge of inciting violence, while a fourth, Tunisian Romdhane Ben Othmane Khir, was acquitted, said lawyer Ilaria Crema.

All defendants denied the charges, and those convicted are expected to appeal the ruling. Prosecutor Roberto Di Martino described the verdict as a “balanced ruling.”

I do sincerely hope that the aim of the ruling was for justice rather than balance.

Italy police detain 174 people in anti-terror sweep

Police raided scores of homes and detained 174 people across Italy on Wednesday in a sweeping anti-terrorism crackdown on suspected Islamic militants.

“The operation has been prepared for some time and confirms Italy has never lowered its guard in the face of terrorist risks,” Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu told journalists.

The crackdown, involving 201 search warrants from Milan to Naples, follows last week’s deadly attacks in London and comes a day after Pisanu warned that terrorism was “knocking on Italy’s door” and urged parliament to strengthen security laws to prevent an attack.

“I’m not saying that we have seized terrorists. It’s a preventative operation in high-risk environments,” Pisanu said before the announcement of detentions.

Okay, so you won’t say you seized terrorists. Would you at least describe the round-up as a “balanced raid” of potentially murderous radical Islamist bastards?

Now, let’s bring it home to America where the “T” word apparently finally has some bite.

Muslim Leader Gets Life for Inciting Jihad

A man convicted for what he said — words that prosecutors said incited his followers to train for violent jihad against the United States — had a few more things to say yesterday in a federal courtroom in Alexandria before he was sentenced to life in prison.

Ali Al-Timimi, a prominent Muslim spiritual leader, delivered an impassioned statement in which he asserted his innocence, read the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and said his religious beliefs do not recognize “secular law.” He then compared himself to the Greek philosopher Socrates, who was sentenced to death for corrupting the young and dishonoring the gods of Athens.

“I will not admit guilt nor seek the court’s mercy,” Timimi told a courtroom crowded with his supporters and prosecutors. “Socrates was mercifully given a cup of hemlock. I was handed a life sentence.”

[…]

The Timimi case culminated an investigation in which 11 Muslim men, all but one from the Washington area, were charged with participating in paramilitary training — including playing paintball — to prepare for “holy war” abroad. Timimi was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the earlier case, in which nine men were convicted in 2003 and 2004.

[…]

The heart of the government’s evidence against Timimi was a meeting he attended in Fairfax on Sept. 16, 2001, five days after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Timimi told his followers that “the time had come for them to go abroad and join the mujaheddin engaged in violent jihad in Afghanistan,” according to court papers.

Treason.

Hey, if the guy wants hemlock, give him some freakin’ hemlock already.

That’s tonight’s global terror link-o-rama. It’s a small (terror-filled) world after all.