Author: Gunner

So the Olympics and the presidential inauguration went off without dirty bombs or crashed planes. Does that mean we’re safe?

The terror attack that Attorney General John Ashcroft warned of last spring never happened, President Bush’s inauguration marking the last of a series of major events that he considered prime targets.

U.S. officials and counterterror experts say it’s unclear whether any plots were thwarted, and they warn the relative quiet should not be viewed as evidence terrorists have turned their attention elsewhere.

Back in May, Ashcroft and other senior administration officials said intelligence channels had picked up persistent indications that the al-Qaida network or its confederates wanted to mount an attack aimed at disrupting the U.S. elections. “A clear and present danger” was how Ashcroft described it.

Then came a succession of high-profile events, starting with the G-8 summit of leading industrialized countries in June at Sea Island, Ga., and continuing through the Democratic and Republican presidential nominating conventions the following two months. The Olympics occurred amid extraordinary security in Greece in August, followed by the hectic final weeks of the U.S. presidential campaign and the Nov. 2 election itself.

The final event was Thursday’s inaugural ceremony, parade and festivities, again under unprecedented security. The worst that happened was a minor scuffle between anti-war protesters and police.

[…]

Nothing happened.

While all of the events mentioned were certainly high profile, that does not necessarily mean that they were ever thought of as targets by al-Quida. If anything, the terrorists have shown that any regular ol’ day can become high profile. There was a time when Sept. 11 was just another day on the calendar.

So, was the drumbeat of warnings necessary? Or, was it, as some Democrats claimed, a calculated move by the Bush administration to scare Americans into re-electing a president whose campaign centered on keeping the country safe.

“All of the intelligence pointed to al-Qaida’s readiness and fervent intent to hit us and hit us hard,” Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said. “We know al-Qaida wants to hit us now. They’ve been unable to because of the vigilance of the American people and the dedication of federal, state and local law enforcement officers.”

The heightened threat announcements and heavy security at major events are becoming the norm in the aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks. No government agency or private company wants to be blamed for not doing enough to prevent the next terror plot, which still is almost universally expected.

That any Democrats made such a claim about the alerts is simply disgusting, especially knowing that those same Democrats would have sought to make political hay of an attack by arguing that we were not safe under Bush.

Dale Watson, former counterterror chief at the FBI, said the potential magnitude of an al-Qaida attack requires a full-scale response to every terrorism tip, no matter its source or perceived veracity.

“Since 9/11, you can’t afford to say, `Well, this is nuts, we’re not going to do anything about it,’” said Watson, now with the Booz Allen Hamilton consultancy company. “If you don’t do everything you can, you’re setting your head on a block to be chopped off if something happens.”

This lack of this edge was the attitude, albeit somewhat understandably pervasive at the time, that allowed the events of 9/11. Can such an edge be maintained?

Former FBI deputy director Weldon Kennedy said a danger exists that without an attack people will tire of the incessant warnings and begin to ignore them, and governments and business will begin balking at spending the enormous sums needed for extra security.

“Now is not the time to cease and desist. Al-Qaida is not going away,” said Kennedy, now with the Guardsmark LLC security firm. “The biggest fear is that we will slip into a mind-set where we ask, ‘Is it really worth it?’”

Yes, that is the fear. Yes, they will try again on our homeland, and we will continue to try to thwart them. Can we sustain the effort the vigilance requires as we seek to cut the legs out from beneath the terrorists’ movement abroad? I honestly expect more successful terror on our soil, as we have to be right every time while the Islamist bastards only have to get through once.

Mildly interesting.

One of Afghanistan’s most powerful warlords survived an apparent al-Qa’ida assassination attempt when a suicide bomber blew himself up just yards away at a prayer service yesterday.

Twenty five people were injured, two critically, but General Abdul Rashid Dostum was shaken but unharmed after a bearded man, pretending to be a beggar, detonated explosives strapped to his body.

General Dostum told a local television station: “After Eid prayers, I greeted some people and when I wanted to put on my shoes, my bodyguards were trying to stop people coming toward me.

“Suddenly there was a very big explosion. Fortunately, with the grace of God, I was not injured.”

General Dostum’s brother and two of his bodyguards were among the wounded. Qadir Dostum said: “I was embracing my brother, then suddenly something exploded and I was injured in my face.”

The explosion happened just behind General Dostum as worshippers queued up to kiss his lapels, apparently as guards prevented the bomber from approaching the warlord.

The prayers, held in General Dostum’s fiefdom of Sheberghan in northern Afghanistan, were to mark the beginning of the Muslim Festival of Eid al-Adha.

A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was an act of revenge for General Dostum’s alleged killing of captured Taliban fighters in 2001. Mullah Abdul Hakim Latifi said one of its members had mounted the attack to avenge the alleged slaughter. “Thousands of Taliban had surrendered, but Dostum and his men killed them,” Mullah Latifi said in a satellite telephone call from an undisclosed location. “We will attack any Afghans who are allies of the Americans or the present government.”

The body of the attacker, who was believed to be in his twenties, was too mutilated to be identified. Most suicide attacks in Afghanistan are believed to have been carried out by foreign al-Qa’ida operatives, perhaps at the behest of the Taliban. Police later claimed to have arrested a Bangladeshi in connection with the attack, which coincided with a defiant call to arms from the fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, who recently scorned talks about amnesties for low-level guerrillas.

General Dostum is one of Afghanistan’s most hated men and has a long list of enemies, although the nature of the assassination bid pointed firmly at al-Qa’ida or one of its allies.

Analysts warned that if a rival warlord was eventually blamed for the attack, further violence could be expected. “The important thing now is Dostum’s perception of this attack, whether he sees this as an attack from the outside, from the Taliban or al-Qa’ida, or from the inside, from his enemies in Kabul,” Reuters quoted one diplomat from northern Afghanistan as saying.

General Dostum is blamed for killing thousands of civilians and is notorious for repeatedly switching sides during the country’s years of civil war until the Taliban drove him into exile. He returned to power as an ally of the US in 2001 and came fourth in last year’s presidential election. The ethnic Uzbek strongman is particularly hated by the Taliban because he stands accused of killing thousands of their fighters by cramming them in metal containers where they suffocated in 2001. He rarely emerges from his fortified palaces and is always surrounded by security guards.

I always love to see failure by the terrorists but, after reading about this warlord, it seems there was no way humanity could’ve lost in this case.

In a related point, Warlords was one of the few paddle-controlled games for the Atari 2600 that was actually fun, especially if you had four players going at it.